Punks, Geeks, Kings, And Men: Listening To "Classy" Freddie Blassie's Discography

How many professions could have made "Classy" Freddie Blassie a superstar? Even more than it does today, pro wrestling in its vintage era stood somewhere between bloody slapstick comedy and anarchic ultraviolent catharsis. The participants in its charismatic and credibly violent unreality operated close enough to rock star subversion that the Dictators were happy to cop wrestling's style for the benefit of their proto-punk performances. In this strange, gory, punk-adjacent period, Blassie was one of the sport's archetypal geniuses.

Blassie broke through working for Jack Pfefer, the promoter widely credited for first exposing the business in the 1930s; Pfefer would later popularize spectacles like future Ed Wood repertory galoot Tor Johnson and "World's Ugliest Man," The French Angel Maurice Tillet. In 1960s Los Angeles, the gorehound antagonist role Blassie had honed down South over the previous decade made him so thoroughly loathed that fans eventually came around to finding his rampages not just entertaining but worth rooting for. By the time he retired from wrestling in 1974 to become a manager he'd found a notable place as one of pop subculture's cult antiheroes.

In the midst of a particularly weird ten-year post-retirement stretch—one that saw him act as Muhammad Ali's cornerman in his infamous 1976 exhibition against the Japanese wrestler Antonio Inoki, manage a then-heel Hulk Hogan in his first stint with the WWF, and film a My Dinner With Andre spoof with Andy Kaufman titled My Breakfast With Blassie—Blassie cut a record. Of course he did: Blassie was a star with a voice and an attitude that fit a particular sensibility of the times, and as a general rule, he wasn't in the business of saying no.

In the mid-late '70s Angeleno axis of the nascent Dr. Demento radio show and the early novelty-song years of Rhino Records, a single like Blassie's "Pencil Neck Geek" must have felt like some kind of wonderful inevitability. It fit perfectly in the bizarre nexus that triangulated punk, comedy, and outsider culture and could be found everywhere in the sunset years of 1970s L.A., from The Groundlings to the Weirdos to Matt Groening's Life in Hell.

"Pencil Neck Geek" was a crossover smash, if such a thing can be said to exist in the "music recorded by pro wrestlers" category. For one thing, it has been debated that the song's popularity in comedy and underground circles was enough to shift the definition of the term "geek" from the realm of circus performers to the socially-awkward gawky dork definition whose demographic power has surged, unchecked, over the last couple decades. For another, it has a fascinating place in rock lore, since the guitarist who twanged out its outlaw country-via-rockabilly melody was a sessionman known as Billy Zoom. "Pencil Neck Geek" was recorded in '74, the same year Blassie hung up his boots; by the time the song was commercially released on the 1978 King of Men EP, Zoom had joined X, who'd release "Adult Books" b/w "We're Desperate" that same year.

As an actual performance, the song is a tour de force of old-guy shit-talk comedy. Blassie was a robustly grizzled mid-fifties when he cut this single, and his promo skills were second-to-none—again, this is the guy who the WWF gave to Hulk Hogan in 1979 when they figured the Hulkster wasn't ready to speak for himself. So the effect of his non-singing presence makes the song into a sort of funhouse-mirror Johnny Cash ballad—all omens and portents delivered with grave urgency and simmering anger, except that these omens and portents are about a plague of gangly twerps who can't even be used as fish bait because their tainted presence would kill all the marine life. Considering Blassie approaches hitting maybe one roughly melodic note somewhere in the first chorus before thinking better of it and backing off, it's still a triumph of a lead vocal off timing alone.

But "Pencil Neck Geek" was only really released as a single in promo form, and mostly disseminated through Dr. Demento airings and various novelty compilations, including 1985's Rock 'n' Wrestling-bandwagoning Wrestling Rocks, the Nuggets of pro-graps music. Its actual wider commercial release came through the aforementioned King of Men EP, initially distributed through a one-off label called Raunchy Tonk Records with a sleeve lettered by Grateful Dead-affiliated psychedelic cartoonist/illustrator/surfer/born-again Christian Rick Griffin. Odds are that, even if you've heard "Pencil Neck Geek," you haven't heard the other three cuts on this EP. The only question left to be asked in this instance is how much more deranged the Blassie discography can actually get.

"Blassie, King of Men" is the other song from this session that wound up enshrined in the Rhino novelty canon, though at nowhere near the widespread level of "Pencil Neck Geek"—maybe because it's more dependent on Blassie's wrestling persona than the general tongue-in-cheek tough-guy bully-bluster of the song that would later usurp it as the title track on bootleg reissues. It follows the same template as "Pencil Neck Geek," though, right down to its tempo and lyrical delivery. The A- and B-sides are so similar, in fact, as to make this the only wrestler-country single that can feasibly parallel the contemporary Jamaican reggae/dub tradition of versioning. If "King of Men" loses something in the change in subject from specifically targeted anti-geek hostility towards general-interest threats of (cannibalistic) violence, it at least stays faithfully On Brand. Blassie can't sing, but the guy is a pro.

Thankfully the EP's deep cuts—here we are, talking about Freddie Blassie deep cuts—are their own variety of weird. "No Doubt About It" is not so much a song as an extended spoken-word promo of the kind that Ric Flair would make renowned in the 1980s—"all you gals come out tonight when Freddie Blassie's wrestling in your hometown, come out and see god's gift to women"—but even more breathlessly audacious. This is probably because Blassie had reached the "haggard-looking grandpa who could grievously wound you with his cane" phase of his life/career and arguably wasn't the typical sex symbol. On the other hand, it was the '70s and shit was crazy and this is Freddie Blassie we're talking about.

Blassie also stumbles over the obligatory bad gender politics of the times in case you needed a reason to skip it—"This guy when he was born, his mudda was happy, an' his fatha was happy, because his mudda wanted a girl an' his fatha wanted a boy, and they were both happy the day he was born, y'know what I'm talkin' about?" But, for the most part, Blassie's schtick here does illuminate how fine the line can be between Rowdy Roddy Piper and Rodney Dangerfield. Rounding things out is a cover of Elvis-comeback-precursor "U.S. Male," which sort of works because the original's largely just a spoken-sung volley of threats, although the singers Blassie gets to carry the actually-sung bit of the chorus sound pretty solidly out of place.

King Of Men might not even be the crowning achievement of the Blassie discography, however. 1983's I Bite the Songs, released through Rhino exclusively on picture disc, is comedy music turned grotesque, with interstitial skits featuring a 65-year-old Blassie fighting between his showbiz-professional side and the side of him that gets a kick out of mutilating people.

As he cautions on the intro: "Although the following recording has been edited for home listening, certain portions pertinent to plot and character development may not be suitable for all family members. Therefore, if younger persons are currently listening, parents are advised to …" and here he dramatically clears his throat, as though stalling for time "… advised to … murder the little bastards! Wring their scrawny necks! Get 'em in the gut and rotate! That's right, sucker punch 'em in the balls!"

And that is how we segue into Blassie's take on Bo Diddley's dozens-exchange classic "Say Man," only with old-schoolers like Mr. Moto and Mike Mazurki, and breakfast date Andy Kaufman, in the mix. Most of the album is like that, really, with the only difference being whatever music's backing up Blassie's tirades. This ranges from rockabilly to dinner lounge music—a natural pairing with "Ezy Lisnin'," where our hero upbraids Muhammad Ali for claiming Gorgeous George and not Blassie was the inspiration for his trash-talk style—to pretty much just nothing but ambient background noise, as on the two-part promo showdown/Catskills routine with Maniac John Tolos, "T-O-L-O-S Spells Trouble!" and "Bummer at the Blassie Bar."

The inclusion of "Pencil Neck Geek" and "Blassie, King of Men" make this a sort of singles-plus-filler deal, except the filler is the bellowing of a senior citizen who wanted to and probably legitimately could beat the shit out of whoever he wanted. It's a subtle difference, but an important one.