The Night I Met Screamin' Jay
by Stephen D. Gross
I loved the New Music - we called it Rhythm 'n Blues and because the tunes were liberally seasoned with Bop-bop-shoo-do-bops, shang-a-lang-langs and Bi-doom-be-doom-be-dooms, we labeled them Doo-Wops. My folks' combo Admiral ten-inch tv, am radio and record player was equipped to dig sounds out of 78s, but the Doo-Wops were all 45s. My old wooden Sylvania "homework special" managed to feebly lock onto a signal from WNJR in Newark, however, and I got introduced to sounds I never dreamed existed. All 15 of WNJR's DJs were Black and the sounds that ricocheted off my tympanic membrane made me long for an alternate reality I really knew nothing about.
After awhile a guy named Alan Freed, the man most credited with coining the term Rock and Roll (avoiding the stigma attached to R & B and so-called Race Music). Born in Johnstown Pennsylvania in 1922 of a Welsh mother and Lithuanian born father, Freed was twelve when his family moved to Salem, Ohio where he formed a band known as the Sultans of Swing (!), in which he played trombone. In 1949 Freed left Cleveland's WXTL for New York City's WINS, armed with an armada of tight harmonies and dazzling arrangements, and Life As I Knew It changed forever.
One of the first DJs and producers to popularize Rock and Roll, Freed mounted a number of heavily talented R&B shows headlining up and coming stars such as Bo Diddley, Texans Buddy Holly and Buddy Knox, and Mickey and Sylvia ("Love is Strange"), and groups such as the Cleftones, Platters, Moonglows and Cadillacs.
Although I first saw Screamin' Jay Hawkins when he appeared at Freed's Brooklyn Paramount Christmas Show, it was two years before I actually got to talk to him. And the circumstances were strange, indeed.
Born in Cleveland in 1929, Jalacy Hawkins studied classical piano as a child and had aspired to follow in the prodogious footsteps of the great Paul Robeson and become an opera singer, but when his ambitions were unrealized he felt he could perhaps best express himself by playing piano and singing the Blues. Spending time in the Pacific Theater during World War II, Jay claimed to have been captured and tortured as a POW. According to the documentary, I Put a Spell on Me, upon liberation he blew his chief tormentor's head off by taping a hand-grenade into his mouth and pulling the pin. He reportedly served as Alaska's Middleweight boxing champ in 1949, but shortly after, gave up boxing trunks and gloves for red leather, leopard skins, outrageous hats and a guitar.
Jay's main claim to fame, I Put A Spell On You, a tune he originally envisioned as a refined ballad, became infused during its creation with a heavy dose of voodoo and has taken on a life of its own.
According to the AllMusic Guide to the Blues, "The entire band was intoxicated during a recording session where "Hawkins screamed, grunted, and gurgled his way through the tune with utter drunken abandon. The resulting performance was no ballad but instead a "raw, guttural track" that became his greatest commercial success and surpassed a million copies in sales. "The performance was mesmerizing, although Hawkins himself blacked out and was unable to remember the session, afterward being forced to relearn the song from the recorded version." Meanwhile the record label released a second version of the single, and in response to complaints about the recording's overt sexuality, removed most of the grunts. This still didn't prevent it from being banned from radio in some areas.
At Freed's Christmas show, he bribed Jay to lie in an on-stage coffin from which Jay emerged with a devilish onstage persona replete with leopard and snake skins, cauldron, Voodoo accoutrements and a smoking shrunken head at the end of a stick.
But the night I met Screamin' was bizarre and entirely unscripted. It was a post-Bar-Mitzvah summer evening and Dennis, who was one of my main Doo-Wop buddies, had informed me that The Channels, The Kodoks and Screamin' Jay Hawkins were performing that evening, at a record hop in a high school gym in the South Bronx. Although born in the South Bronx, by the time I was old enough to sneak off to Hunts Point for some 4-part harmony, it had turned into a third-world war zone - brutal, unforgiving, and predictably dangerous. But we were cool. Dennis and I. We were harmless, pale waifs - little, very white kids who were obviously there for the music. And so we were. There was a slick hardwood floor, designed for roundball, an exotic mix of shifting schools of Black kids, Haitians and Dominicans, a few roiling clots of brassy Puerto Ricanos, the performers of course, and me and Dennis. Not a teacher, security person or school official was to be seen except for the M.C., who also furnished all the music.
At one end of the gym floor stood a battered card table with a record player that only accommodated 45's, and a short stack of records by those performers who were ready to lip sync their Greatest Hits. No band, no mikes, no kick ass speakers. Just a Crosley 45 rpm Stack-O-Matic and a hungry, impatient crowd, sneers and sharp elbows.
The Kodoks kicked it off with "Gee Oh Gosh", hitting every note impeccably and the crowd loved it. After awhile it was The Channels with Earl Lewis singing lead in his signature falsetto. Opening with "The Gleam In Your Eye", a tune Earl wrote on his paper route, the gym lights softened and we could hear the crowd noises punctuated by groans, grunts and barks, any of which could have suggested a mood change in the big room. The Channels were amazing of course, hitting every note exactly like they did on the recording, which was one thing we never worried about when we went to record hops. They rolled into "Now You Know", "Closer"'s flip side and a complex vocal arrangement, pulling it off flawlessly, and upon persistent urging from the crowd, (and a skitterish DJ on the Crosley), they began to mouth "The Closer You Are" about two beats behind the recording. No one minded - they were seeing the Channels in person - and Screamin' Jay was in the on deck circle.
"Closer" is a very romantic tune, and the gym was stuffed with posturing, amore-seeking, testosterone driven teen age boys competing for space and attention. The shoving, strutting and loose elbows slowly escalated as the Channels wrapped it up and Jay walked out onto the floor.
"Constipation Blues" and "Feast of the Mau Mau" were still a few years down the road and The Screamer hadn't too many tricks in his Sack 'O Tunes to offer the crowd . Hearing "I Put A Spell On You" was the reason most of us were there.
Dressed in red, leopard skins around his shoulders, hair slicked back in a tidal wave conk, Jay glowered like Baal and shook his little stick with the shrunken head on the end menacingly at us. We all gasped and gawked and shuffled up toward him to get a bigger dose of what he was handing out.
"You better stop
The things that you're doing
I said "Watch out!"
I ain't lying, yeah!"
I looked around for confirmation that this was the greatest thing that had ever happened to all of us and saw the crowd growing more agitated. "What a performance!" I thought and then with
"I ain't gonna take none of your
Fooling around
I ain't gonna take none of your
Putting me down"
the fight broke out. There were leather heels slippin' and slidin' on the hardwood floor, arms flailing and girls screaming. Everyone was scrambling to get out of the way, and Jay kept on singing. Shaking his little monkey head stick and moving his lips along to his tune, but I could see he was losing his concentration. Maybe it was because he fought professionally in Alaska at one time, but his focus was on the brawl. There were several guys involved, mostly missing with wild roundhouses, throwing themselves off balance and falling hard - sometimes falling on their own switchblades - and drawing blood. And this made the hardwood floor very slippery. Loose change spilled from pockets, lay glistening in the little scarlet pools, and as a watched non-combatant onlookers diving for the sticky dimes and quarters, I was reminded that this was a very poor neighborhood. Someone upended the Crosley effectively ending the concert but Jay's jaw had dropped and his eyes bugged out like shiny black beetles as he reflexively continued to shake his mojo monkey-stick. Standing near him I drifted closer and started making small talk with The Great Man who was riveted on the folks diving for spare change among the felled warriors. I asked him if the little shriveled head had a name and never taking his eyes from the writhing, grasping bodies he said, "Yeah, this is Henry - he don't talk too much. Screamin' Jay went on to play roles in several movies including American Hot Wax (in which he played himself) and Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train, in which he played a night clerk in a Memphis hotel.
Hawkins died on February 12, 2000 after surgery to treat an aneurysm. He left behind many children by many women; about 55 were known (or suspected) upon his death, and upon investigation, that number "soon became perhaps 75 offspring". Maybe one of these days I'll have the good fortune to meet one and be able to tell her about the night I met her dad.
note: I PUT A SPELL ON YOU by Screamin' Jay Hawkins has also been recorded by Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Animals; Natacha Atlas; Audience; Jimmy Barnes; Dick Barsamian;
Tab Benoit; Kat Bjelland; The Blowin' Smoke Rhythm & Blues Band;
Arthur Brown; The C.A. Quintet; Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds;
Joe Cocker; The Countdown Singers; Countdown; Tim Curry;
Demon Fuzz; Baby Jane Dexter; Steve Ferrone; Bryan Ferry;
Fever Tree; The Five Americans; Robben Ford; Diamanda Galás;
Golly Wobblers from Hell; Jerry Granelli; Buddy Guy;
Screamin' Jay Hawkins; ..... and many others.
(....Because you're mine.
All right!)
by Stephen D. Gross
I loved the New Music - we called it Rhythm 'n Blues and because the tunes were liberally seasoned with Bop-bop-shoo-do-bops, shang-a-lang-langs and Bi-doom-be-doom-be-dooms, we labeled them Doo-Wops. My folks' combo Admiral ten-inch tv, am radio and record player was equipped to dig sounds out of 78s, but the Doo-Wops were all 45s. My old wooden Sylvania "homework special" managed to feebly lock onto a signal from WNJR in Newark, however, and I got introduced to sounds I never dreamed existed. All 15 of WNJR's DJs were Black and the sounds that ricocheted off my tympanic membrane made me long for an alternate reality I really knew nothing about.
After awhile a guy named Alan Freed, the man most credited with coining the term Rock and Roll (avoiding the stigma attached to R & B and so-called Race Music). Born in Johnstown Pennsylvania in 1922 of a Welsh mother and Lithuanian born father, Freed was twelve when his family moved to Salem, Ohio where he formed a band known as the Sultans of Swing (!), in which he played trombone. In 1949 Freed left Cleveland's WXTL for New York City's WINS, armed with an armada of tight harmonies and dazzling arrangements, and Life As I Knew It changed forever.
One of the first DJs and producers to popularize Rock and Roll, Freed mounted a number of heavily talented R&B shows headlining up and coming stars such as Bo Diddley, Texans Buddy Holly and Buddy Knox, and Mickey and Sylvia ("Love is Strange"), and groups such as the Cleftones, Platters, Moonglows and Cadillacs.
Although I first saw Screamin' Jay Hawkins when he appeared at Freed's Brooklyn Paramount Christmas Show, it was two years before I actually got to talk to him. And the circumstances were strange, indeed.
Born in Cleveland in 1929, Jalacy Hawkins studied classical piano as a child and had aspired to follow in the prodogious footsteps of the great Paul Robeson and become an opera singer, but when his ambitions were unrealized he felt he could perhaps best express himself by playing piano and singing the Blues. Spending time in the Pacific Theater during World War II, Jay claimed to have been captured and tortured as a POW. According to the documentary, I Put a Spell on Me, upon liberation he blew his chief tormentor's head off by taping a hand-grenade into his mouth and pulling the pin. He reportedly served as Alaska's Middleweight boxing champ in 1949, but shortly after, gave up boxing trunks and gloves for red leather, leopard skins, outrageous hats and a guitar.
Jay's main claim to fame, I Put A Spell On You, a tune he originally envisioned as a refined ballad, became infused during its creation with a heavy dose of voodoo and has taken on a life of its own.
According to the AllMusic Guide to the Blues, "The entire band was intoxicated during a recording session where "Hawkins screamed, grunted, and gurgled his way through the tune with utter drunken abandon. The resulting performance was no ballad but instead a "raw, guttural track" that became his greatest commercial success and surpassed a million copies in sales. "The performance was mesmerizing, although Hawkins himself blacked out and was unable to remember the session, afterward being forced to relearn the song from the recorded version." Meanwhile the record label released a second version of the single, and in response to complaints about the recording's overt sexuality, removed most of the grunts. This still didn't prevent it from being banned from radio in some areas.
At Freed's Christmas show, he bribed Jay to lie in an on-stage coffin from which Jay emerged with a devilish onstage persona replete with leopard and snake skins, cauldron, Voodoo accoutrements and a smoking shrunken head at the end of a stick.
But the night I met Screamin' was bizarre and entirely unscripted. It was a post-Bar-Mitzvah summer evening and Dennis, who was one of my main Doo-Wop buddies, had informed me that The Channels, The Kodoks and Screamin' Jay Hawkins were performing that evening, at a record hop in a high school gym in the South Bronx. Although born in the South Bronx, by the time I was old enough to sneak off to Hunts Point for some 4-part harmony, it had turned into a third-world war zone - brutal, unforgiving, and predictably dangerous. But we were cool. Dennis and I. We were harmless, pale waifs - little, very white kids who were obviously there for the music. And so we were. There was a slick hardwood floor, designed for roundball, an exotic mix of shifting schools of Black kids, Haitians and Dominicans, a few roiling clots of brassy Puerto Ricanos, the performers of course, and me and Dennis. Not a teacher, security person or school official was to be seen except for the M.C., who also furnished all the music.
At one end of the gym floor stood a battered card table with a record player that only accommodated 45's, and a short stack of records by those performers who were ready to lip sync their Greatest Hits. No band, no mikes, no kick ass speakers. Just a Crosley 45 rpm Stack-O-Matic and a hungry, impatient crowd, sneers and sharp elbows.
The Kodoks kicked it off with "Gee Oh Gosh", hitting every note impeccably and the crowd loved it. After awhile it was The Channels with Earl Lewis singing lead in his signature falsetto. Opening with "The Gleam In Your Eye", a tune Earl wrote on his paper route, the gym lights softened and we could hear the crowd noises punctuated by groans, grunts and barks, any of which could have suggested a mood change in the big room. The Channels were amazing of course, hitting every note exactly like they did on the recording, which was one thing we never worried about when we went to record hops. They rolled into "Now You Know", "Closer"'s flip side and a complex vocal arrangement, pulling it off flawlessly, and upon persistent urging from the crowd, (and a skitterish DJ on the Crosley), they began to mouth "The Closer You Are" about two beats behind the recording. No one minded - they were seeing the Channels in person - and Screamin' Jay was in the on deck circle.
"Closer" is a very romantic tune, and the gym was stuffed with posturing, amore-seeking, testosterone driven teen age boys competing for space and attention. The shoving, strutting and loose elbows slowly escalated as the Channels wrapped it up and Jay walked out onto the floor.
"Constipation Blues" and "Feast of the Mau Mau" were still a few years down the road and The Screamer hadn't too many tricks in his Sack 'O Tunes to offer the crowd . Hearing "I Put A Spell On You" was the reason most of us were there.
Dressed in red, leopard skins around his shoulders, hair slicked back in a tidal wave conk, Jay glowered like Baal and shook his little stick with the shrunken head on the end menacingly at us. We all gasped and gawked and shuffled up toward him to get a bigger dose of what he was handing out.
"You better stop
The things that you're doing
I said "Watch out!"
I ain't lying, yeah!"
I looked around for confirmation that this was the greatest thing that had ever happened to all of us and saw the crowd growing more agitated. "What a performance!" I thought and then with
"I ain't gonna take none of your
Fooling around
I ain't gonna take none of your
Putting me down"
the fight broke out. There were leather heels slippin' and slidin' on the hardwood floor, arms flailing and girls screaming. Everyone was scrambling to get out of the way, and Jay kept on singing. Shaking his little monkey head stick and moving his lips along to his tune, but I could see he was losing his concentration. Maybe it was because he fought professionally in Alaska at one time, but his focus was on the brawl. There were several guys involved, mostly missing with wild roundhouses, throwing themselves off balance and falling hard - sometimes falling on their own switchblades - and drawing blood. And this made the hardwood floor very slippery. Loose change spilled from pockets, lay glistening in the little scarlet pools, and as a watched non-combatant onlookers diving for the sticky dimes and quarters, I was reminded that this was a very poor neighborhood. Someone upended the Crosley effectively ending the concert but Jay's jaw had dropped and his eyes bugged out like shiny black beetles as he reflexively continued to shake his mojo monkey-stick. Standing near him I drifted closer and started making small talk with The Great Man who was riveted on the folks diving for spare change among the felled warriors. I asked him if the little shriveled head had a name and never taking his eyes from the writhing, grasping bodies he said, "Yeah, this is Henry - he don't talk too much. Screamin' Jay went on to play roles in several movies including American Hot Wax (in which he played himself) and Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train, in which he played a night clerk in a Memphis hotel.
Hawkins died on February 12, 2000 after surgery to treat an aneurysm. He left behind many children by many women; about 55 were known (or suspected) upon his death, and upon investigation, that number "soon became perhaps 75 offspring". Maybe one of these days I'll have the good fortune to meet one and be able to tell her about the night I met her dad.
note: I PUT A SPELL ON YOU by Screamin' Jay Hawkins has also been recorded by Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Animals; Natacha Atlas; Audience; Jimmy Barnes; Dick Barsamian;
Tab Benoit; Kat Bjelland; The Blowin' Smoke Rhythm & Blues Band;
Arthur Brown; The C.A. Quintet; Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds;
Joe Cocker; The Countdown Singers; Countdown; Tim Curry;
Demon Fuzz; Baby Jane Dexter; Steve Ferrone; Bryan Ferry;
Fever Tree; The Five Americans; Robben Ford; Diamanda Galás;
Golly Wobblers from Hell; Jerry Granelli; Buddy Guy;
Screamin' Jay Hawkins; ..... and many others.
(....Because you're mine.
All right!)
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