Nashville Singer's Career Immortalized by Blind Man's Penis

August 3, 2006 8:25 AM

Ramsey Kearney was a teenage country music prodigy nicknamed the Dixie Farmboy, a rockabilly singer with the Jimmie Martin Combo, a songwriter for Brenda Lee, and a producer of the most cloying Elvis tribute single ever recorded. Kearney would have almost no connection to alternative music whatsoever until John Trubee, a notorious crank phone caller and sideman for Zoogz Rift, found an ad in the back of the Midnight Globe tabloid from Kearney's Nashco Records label, a song-poem company offering to put his words to music for a small fee. Trubee sent his own disturbing LSD-fueled lyrics to Nashco, but to his surprise, Nashco accepted the lyrics after taking a $79.95 fee from Trubee. Kearney tweaked the lyrics slightly in order to avoid a lawsuit from Stevie Wonder, but the end product was the cult classic novelty song, Blind Man's Penis. (more inside)
posted by jonp72 (12 comments total)

A newspaper account of Kearney's involvement in the song-poem business

A rave review of John Trubee from a pre-Simpsons Matt Groening

A NSFW flash animation of Blind Man's Penis

A John Trubee interview from Stanford University
posted by jonp72 at 8:29 AM on August 3, 2006

Previously.
posted by The White Hat at 8:29 AM on August 3, 2006

Awesome. Well done.
posted by boo_radley at 8:32 AM on August 3, 2006

Still, thanks for the post! If not for this post I'd have never known about this. How bizzare...
posted by Stauf at 8:33 AM on August 3, 2006

!
posted by drezdn at 8:37 AM on August 3, 2006

The flash animation is brilliant.
posted by ColdChef at 8:39 AM on August 3, 2006

When I first heard the song on a mixtape a few years back, I had a long debate over the lyrics. Was it, “And if little baby Martians come out of the UFOs / You can fuck them,” or, “And if little baby Martians come out of the UFOs / You can hug them?”

Now I know for sure I was right. Vomit on me baby, yeah yeah yeah.
posted by ijoshua at 8:50 AM on August 3, 2006

The documentary Off the Charts has some great interviews with both Ramsey Kearney and John Trubee. Ramsey in particular seems to have a great sense of humour about the whole thing now.
posted by Robot Johnny at 10:40 AM on August 3, 2006

Isn't the song actually called "Peace and Love"?
posted by Astro Zombie at 11:29 AM on August 3, 2006

Wow, the world is rediscovering the genius that is Blind Man's Penis!

I used to listen to in in the eighties... on one of my all-time favorite cassets, The Enigma Variations (Vol I).

I wish I had all my Rodney on the Rock cassets... Or my cassets from Andrea Enthal's 12 O'clock Rock (on at Saturday, midnight, KPFK in Las Angeles-- she played a lot of good, obscure punk!).

I'd love to listen to it again... I wish they were all archived somewhere.

BTW, any one who is into that song should try listening to Music for Nimrods. The DJ, Reverend Dan is the best at raunchy and raucus rock n' roll.
posted by webnrrd2k at 11:42 AM on August 3, 2006

Thanks for this. It was great.
posted by CCBC at 12:26 PM on August 3, 2006

What an incredible story. Wow. Absurdly ararchic and fun. That was great jonp72. It makes me feel like blades of grass growing through the concrete sidewalk, something hopefully irreverent in it.
posted by nickyskye at 5:45 PM on August 4, 2006