Screamin' Jay Hawkins and Henry (foreground)
Before Alice Cooper, Twisted Sister, Marilyn Manson, etc., it was Screamin’ Jay who laid the foundation for Rock ‘n’ Roll’s theatre of the macabre as early as 1954. He also was an early example of the sort of alpha hedonism we might now associate with Motley Crue. While it would be an overstatement to credit him with the birth of Metal, his relationships with dark theatrical presentation, moral panic, powerhouse vocal styles, and women set the stage for myriad shock rockers to follow. Song titles include “Alligator Wine,” “Frenzy,” “Feast of the Mau Mau,” “Constipation Blues,” and one other song I’ll tell you about in a sec.
Jay’s pre-music career backstory is arguably as weird as his musical repertoire. Hawkins was born on a bus (!) passing through Cleveland, Ohio, and was left at an orphanage. He was later adopted by a Blackfoot Indian family. In his youth he studied to be an opera singer, classical pianist, and guitar player. During his U.S. Air Force days in World War II, he also became a skilled boxer, taking the Alaskan middleweight title in 1949.
While you may not have heard of Screamin’ Jay before this writing, you are very likely familiar with a piece of his work, assuming you’ve ever been in audible proximity to a radio. “I Put A Spell on You,” his monster 1956 hit, has been covered innumerable times by an incredibly diverse array of artists: Marilyn Manson, Queen Latifah, The Animals, Jeff Beck, Sonique, and Nina Simone make the list, with Creedence Clearwater Revival’s version being the best known.
The wild, bombastic tone of the song rendered it controversial at the time of release, and it was banned and censored in various regions. While the song was originally intended as a ballad, Jay said “the producer brought in ribs and chicken and got everybody drunk, and we came out with this weird version.” Jay reportedly had to re-listen to the song the following day to learn the lyrics, as he’d blacked out during the recording.
At the suggestion of DJ Alan Freed, Jay was among the first Rock ‘n’ Rollers to employ stage props in his performances. He carried a skull on a stick, called “Henry,” and often opened his shows by jumping out of a coffin, dressed head-to-toe in animal-print clothing and other strangeness. Reportedly, the mid-50′s era show was lurid enough to cause unprepared audience members to faint from time to time.
While never matching the success of “I Put a Spell on You,” Screamin’ Jay enjoyed a long, productive career centered around heavy touring, releasing 19 albums, finding major success in Europe, and even wound up acting in a few mainstream movies. There’s also a hard-to-find documentary on the man called “I Put a Spell on Me.”
His extracurricular activities became legendary as well. No one’s really certain how many children Jay seeded in his lifetime, but when he died on a bus (!!) in 2000 at the age of 70, accounts ranged from between 55 and 75 kids—depending on who you ask.
I guess his spells worked.
