Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Screamin
Jay Hawkins
By Alain Rcaborde
and Jeff Wiener
Our friends at Soul Bag, the leading French blues magazine, arranged a meeting w
ith the somewhat reclusive Screamin Jay Hawkins. The intention was to help him st
age a musical comeback in his U.S. homeland. Jay was delighted and uplifted at t
he prospect. It was a crushing blow to learn a couple of months later that the i
ncredibly youthful and lively septuagenarian we had met had died. During what is
most probably his final interview, Jay, behind his extravagance, revealed himse
lf to be a complex, refined and endearing individual.
"Screamin Jay, he is a wild man." Those words, spoken in broken English by Eszter
Balint s Hungarian character Eva in 1984 s Stranger Than Paradise while "I Put a Sp
ell On You" plays out of a tinny tape deck speaker, pretty much sums up how most
people perceived Jalacy "Screamin Jay" Hawkins. Born July 18, 1929, he passed aw
ay from complications of emergency surgery February 12th at the age of 70, in hi
s final home near Paris, France.
Screamin Jay leaves a legacy every bit as colorful and bizarre as his outrageous
stage show, complete with a bone through his nose, rubber snakes and spiders, an
d a cigarette-smoking skull-on-a-stick named Henry. Throughout his 50-year caree
r, this larger-than-life singer, actor, prize-fighter and multi-instrumentalist
told so many divergent stories about his life
all of them intriguing that it is
difficult to discern reality from fiction.
What is known is that Hawkins was born in Cleveland and left in an orphanage. Wh
en he was 18 months old, a Blackfoot Indian family adopted him, and he fondly re
members having a wonderful childhood. He learned the piano at an early age and s
ubsequently picked up the tenor sax.
At the age of 14, Jay began boxing and went on to become a Golden Gloves amateur
champion. Hawkins joined the army in 1944 and later moved to the Air Force, whe
re he entertained the troops. In 1949 he won the middleweight championship, but
quit boxing to pursue his first love, music.
During a spirited interview, an exuberant Hawkins spoke at length about his infl
uences, frustrations and triumphs.
"Louis Jordan, Wynonie Harris, Little Jimmy Scott, Jay McShann, Joe Liggins, Big
Joe Turner, Roy Brown, Eddie Cleanhead Vinson, Jimmy Witherspoon, these people go
t inside my body and my blood and I decided this is what I wanted to do!
Hawkins released a few unsuccessful singles in the early- and mid- 50 s, but he fina
lly hit with "I Put a Spell On You" for Okeh Records in 1956. Throughout the yea
rs, musicians of diverse musical genres have covered the song, but Creedence Cle
arwater Revival s 1968 version made it hugely popular.
Jay quickly became known for his spectacular stage show. "Alan Freed, he created
the whole thing. We had this show where I m screamin , screamin and doin
I Put a Spell
On You, and he says, Well, you know, Jay, with what you re doing, you don t need to c
ome on stage like normal artists you need to be a little different.
"At this time, we were working the only rock n roll show ever put on in Times Square
in New York, at the Paramount [Theatre]. When Frank Sinatra closed, Alan Freed
opened the next day. The theater where we worked was six floors down, and he car
ried me down to the stage in the back behind the curtains. He d already purchased
this ghastly looking coffin!
"I says, You re sick! There is no black person in the world gonna get in a coffin a
live!
" Jay, you will do this!
"I says,
No, I m gonna die one day, but I m not gonna tempt it.
" Jay, if you wheel out on the stage in this coffin, it ll shock those people out th
ere!
"I said, Yeah! It ll shock me too! But he kept peeling one hundred dollar bills. He
got to $2,500 and something said, Grab it!
"That s what happened! It started when I realized the impact of that coffin. About
three months later I talked to Bob Hall, the electrician of the Apollo Theater.
He said, I heard about this coffin you upset people with in Times Square. Why do
n t you get a skeleton? Why don t you have hands that move? Why don t you make fire sh
oot from your fingertips? Why don t you wear a bone in your nose and come out of a
coffin with all this happening at once! I ll make you a fuse box and when the smo
ke goes off, it ll look like it brought you out the coffin. When we blow the smoke
again, you disappear from the stage and you re back in the coffin!
"He did it, and it worked
But Hawkins eventually felt confined by "Spell," thus becoming a victim of his o
wn success. This was an ironic predicament for someone with such an extensive an
d unusual repertoire. His recordings are filled with an eclectic mix of jazz, bl
ues, rock n roll, and even Vegas crooning, but not of the music for which he maintai
ned a lifelong passion.
"I just wish some record company would let me go into the studio and do opera. N
obody will give me this opportunity, because when I deal with record companies t
hey say, What you ve got like "Constipation Blues" or "Little Demon" or "Frenzy" or
"I Put a Spell On You"? I say, I got nothing against these records, but let me si
ng a little opera.
Oh no, that won t sell! People say, But I thought you liked blues? I
make money with blues, but when I want to make my own little serenity, my own l
ittle life, I listen to opera."
His frustration with American record companies, prejudice and conservative audie
nces who either didn t understand or couldn t appreciate his show, drove him to exil