Screamin’ Jay Hawkins & The Monster

A year, two years ago, he stayed perpetually oiled. Black & White Scotch. Preserved in alcohol, he used to say. Drunk. Once, in the early ‘60’s, traveling from Jamaica to Boston, he wound up in Buffalo after boarding the wrong plane at what was then, in those days before the donkey’s demise, Idlewild Airport in New York. Blearily thinking himself to be in Bean Town, he hopped a taxi and asked to be taken to a certain hotel where he had a reservation! The hackie told him there was no such address, no such hotel. Jay got pissed, jumped out of the cab and found a couple of Buffalo’s finest. They told him the same thing. It wasn’t until later that evening, whilst sobering up in the clink, that he realized he was in the wrong city. Which is pretty drunk.

He’s on the wagon these days, though. One of those cyclical drying-out periods. Coffee, lots of coffee. Orange juice. Not even a beer. And cigarettes. He smokes LUckies. Sometimes he rolls his own Buglers, but right now it’s Luckies.

He’s living in some seedy hotelroom nine floors above mid-town Broadway in Manhattan with his wife Jinny and an obnoxious four-month-old Siamese cat named Cookie. There’s a Jet calendar on the wall. Hats of various degrees of weirdness on nails over the bed. The TV’s on, but no volume. He’s sitting on the bed in a wool knit hat, Hawaiian sport shirt and horn-rimmed glasses, taping a Frank Sinatra album off his record player. There’s a little ceramic foot-shaped ashtray next to him where he snuffs his Luckies. He hasn’t been shaving lately and he’s hot overly enthused about having his picture taken.

There are a slew of reel-to-reel tapes lying around, stuff he recorded over the years for sundry record companies that never got off the shelf. There’s one with a label that says “Game of Love” on it. Thinking that it was a cut of Screamin’ Jay doing the Wayne Fontana & The Mindbenders song, ! ask him to put it on. He looked at me as if I had just said something I wasn’t supposed to say. He turned to his wife and said, “Did you hear which song he wants to hear?” She gives him a dirty look. He makes with the little noises of resignation and hooks the tape up.

His slurred voice comes out over the tape, addressing some imaginary audience: “We are here tonight, ladies and gentlemen, laying down some fine sounds that you haven’t heard and probably will never hear on the radio, simply because Decca is a stupid-ass record company and refuses to. ..

He laughs. “I didn’t mean for you to hear that.” He hits the Fast Forward switch until he finds “Game of Love.”

It’s not the old Wayne Fontana song, it’s a Screamin’ Jay original, a slow, ballad-type thing, about some guy caught between his wife and fresh cunt and how he has to choose between one and the other. As the song progresses, Jay’s wife grows ostensibly more and more pissed-off. I’m beginning to feel like I’m in a movie.

“All right, Jinny, you win,” he spits out as the song fades off.

“Did you listen closely to that song? Did you?” Jinny flares back at him in her Phillipino accent.

“Will you come o«,” Jay moans, “the lyrics keep repeating over and over and over and over and over that the wife finally won, so what’s the problem? What’s the argument? The tune is dedicated to the wife. You understand?”

“Yeah,” shouts the wife, things getting progressively more unreal, “but at the end it says ‘I’m gonna love you forever.’ Now what does that imply, huh?”

“Just what it says! ‘I’m gonna love you forever!’ I’m talkin’ to the wife*.**

“Don’t give me that! What you’re saying is that the wife won but at the same time you’re gonna love this other woman forever.”

“Oh, for Godsakes, you misinterpret it!”

“No, no. Not me. Maybe you do!”

“Me? Come on, Jinny, who recorded the goddam thing?!”

“You! And the song says you’re in love with this other . . ”

“Oh, come on, that’s enough! I’m finished, I don’t got no more to say.”

“Well, then, you shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“Goddam! Nick wanted to hear the tune! Blame Nick!”

“Well, you know, then, you, you don’t have to ...”

“Oh, man, come on, let’s not have an argument, it’s only a goddam song.”

At the age of 43, it’s been over 15 years since Screamin’ Jay Hawkins recorded “I Put a Spell on You.”

“I originally wrote the song ‘cause at that timed was going out with some girl who decided that she was gonna put me down. I decided that I didn’t want her to put me down, so I wrote a song to her. And the song was called ‘I Put a Spell on You.’

“I had messed around with about three different companies prior to going to Columbia. ‘I Put a Spell on You’ was actually released prior to Okeh,j which was a subsidiary of Columbia. It was released on the Grand label in Philadelphia. It was the same song, but it was a sweet ballad. No gimmicks. No groans.

No screams. No moans. Just a ballad. And then I got picked up by Columbia. Arnold Makson was the head of Columbia at the time, and he felt we had to do something different in regards to the song. So he brought in a case of Italian Swiss Colony Muscatel and we all got our heads bent. Me, Panama Francis, A1 Lukas, Big A1 Sears, LeRoy Kirkland, Sam “The Man” Taylor, Mickey “Guitar” Baker. We all got blind drunk. Ten days later, the record came out on the Okeh label. I listened to it and I heard all those drunken screams and groans and yells. And that’s how I became Screamin’ Jay Hawkins.”

When the Okeh version of “I Put a Spell on You” hit the transistor scene in 1956, it became, to put things mildly, a sensation. The collective pubes of the breathing universe were brashly tweaked by this human known as Screamin Jay, a gent who not only puked forth one ofthe first truly rock ‘n’ roll retch-forms to sully the cultural doilies of America, but who also seemed to fuck, shit, piss, fart, and do the Dallas Two-Step with his larynx.

The record sold a quarter of a million copies. Puritans and morespunks across the nation felt that the song’s closing segment was an aural portrait of unimaginably heinous goingson. Screamin’ Jay’s vocal hallucinations were accused of being invocative of everything’ from cannibalism to fucking your baby sister in the heinie. A concession was made: the groan-coda was censored from the song. Not enough, screamed American mom-hood, driven sleepless by spectral visions of their 12-year-old daughters being forced to suck this nefarious cannibal’s 14” dong under the threat of a curare-dipped blow-dart. The song was completely banned from radio. But the sticky teenage mid-brains would not be so easily allayed. The record went on to sell another quarter-million copies by word of mouth.

Jalacy Hawkins went on the road. Jalacy Hawkins encountered certain problems, problems both of the soul and of the meat.

“I didn’t know what I had done. This record comes out and I’ve created a monster. Man, it was weird. I was forced to live the life of a monster. I’d go to do my .act at Rockland Palace and there’d be all these goddam mothers walking the street with picket signs: WE DON’T WANT OUR DAUGHTERS TO LOOK AT SCREAMIN’ JAY HAWKINS! I mean, I’m some kinda bogeyman. I come outa coffins. Skulls, snakes, crawlin’ hands, fire and all that mess.”

He had troubles with the caskets he used in his act also. He first used one in 1956 at an Alan Freed Show at the Paramount in New York. For his first few shows he used rented coffins, which usually set him back about $50 a throw. Then, the National Coffin Association got on to him and accused him of “making fun of the dead.” They sent word around to all the funeral parlors not to rent any more coffins to one Mr. Jalacy Hawkins. He finally bought his own for $850.

Jay remembers some unpleasant runons with certain notable good guys of the early rock scenario.

“Somewhere around 1956 or so, there was this guy by the name of Bob Horn who did American Bandstand from the Philadelphia Arena, which was located at 46th and Market, in West Philadelphia. He got busted for a certain reason which isn’t necessary to discuss at the present time, and that’s when ‘Dick Clark took over Bandstand. And when he did, he started off at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City, New Jersey. He called me to open his first show for him. He was so pleased with the opening that he asked me to stay over and do the show the second day also. His parting words to me were, ‘If I can ever do anything for you, don’t hestitate to call me.’ And then when I made ‘Shattered’ and a few other records for Decca, I sent word to Dick Clark, asking him if he would please play my records on his show. The reply which I got back was: ‘Who’s Screamin’ Jay Hawkins?’ So I said, To hell with you too, Jack. Man, there’s some assholes in this business, some real assholes. People forget. (Quickly.”

And then there’s, Jay’s First meeting with Paul Anka, formerly of “Diana”— “Lonely Boy”—“Puppy Love” fame, who’s currently occupied with BunettaAnka Management and hosting cerebral palsy telethons:

“In 1957, I was on a show with the Cadillacs, Billy Williams, Billy & Lillie Ford, and Fats Domino. A young kid by the^ name of Paul Anka was on the show. He had just had a hit tune out called ‘Diana.’ I’m already tired, I just come off the road. Fats Domino was slated to close the. show, but Fats cancelled out for some reason which we don’t have to go into here. My manager asked me to go on in Fats Domino’s spot. So I insisted on the closing spot on the show, and I was politely told that Paul Anka was going to close the show. I said, ‘To hell with Paul Anka.’ So Paul Anka walks over to me and he says, ‘I’ll come to your funeral.’ What a goddam punk.”

After a few years, Jay got sick of things. He felt, and still feels, that there was some vaguely organized conspiracy that kept his records from getting airplay after “I Put a Spell on You.” His Epic al]bums went nowhere.

“I guess I’ve rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, but when you work your heart out for somebody and they pay you half your money in cash and the other half by check and that check bounces, or they stop payment on it, or you spend your bread traveilin’ to a gig and work hard and then some cat stands there with five or six musclemen and tells you that he ain’t gonna pay you ‘cause he didn’t make his money, you get to -the point where you, start questioning things. . ..

“I used to go with a girl in Philadelphia. Some disc-jockey hit her. I punched his face. He never played any of my records again. .. .”

“In those days, a nigger wasn’t supposed to talk back, wasn’t supposed to open his goddam mouth. Wasn’t even supposed to say the word ‘nigger.’ Now things have changed ‘cause they found out that some of those niggers will kill ya. It’s as simple as that: In those days nobody fought back ... I can’t be concerned with other people, ‘cause I’m a nigger and I speak from a nigger’s viewpoint. . . .

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“I got fed up. I went to Honolulu for ten years ‘cause I figured the world wasn’t ready for me. In the meantime, all these people are recording my god-. dam stuff. Nina Simone. Alan Price. The Animals. Creedence Clearwater Revival. The Who. The Trackers. Them. Manfred Mann. The Seekers. Audience. Arthur Brown. Melvin Van Peebles copied my whole act and put it on Broadway. .. .

“I mean, I’ve had some piss luck. All those people ‘cept me having hits with my songs. I started Chuck Willis wearin’ turbans. I started Little Richard wearin’ capes. Lord Sutch. Arthur Brown. Look at Shaft. Look at Blacula. They’re all usin’ coffins. Everybody at one time or another has taken a little something from me and I get this impression that everybody’s going places with what I was doing 15 goddam years ago. Everybody but me....

“Decca promised me the world if I’d only record for them. So what happened? Nothing. The record doesn’t even get played on the radio once. ...

“Jesus, I recorded a country ^western song for Phillips (‘Too Many Teardrops’). I mean, that song was something. The steel guitar player was from the California Symphony Orchestra and the rest of the band were jazz musicians. So what does the record company do. They only release the record in Hawaii'. Did you ever in your life hear of anything like that?

“I recorded ‘Itty Bitty Pretty One’ recently, and what happens? A week later the Jackson Five record it and have a hit with it and meanwhile the company I cut it for (Hot Line) goes bankrupt and the record never gets distributed. It doesn’t make sense to me. .. .”

Hawkins’ proclivity toward continually receiving the faecal end of the stick in his native country is fortunately somewhat offset by the appreciation, though minimal, he has accrued Over There.

His bimonthly royalty statements always include passably nice-sized residuals from England, Germany, Istanbul, Australia, Austria, Japan, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, Finland, and other such places.

Jay’s “Constipation Blues” (“It was the first time I'd ever been constipated so I decided to put if on wax. To this day I don’t know what brought it on. I thought it was pretty unusual, y’know? I was in the hospital at the time and I said to myself, a subject like this must be put to music”) was a smash hit in Japan, and only Japan, in 1968. (“I guess the pains of not bein ’ able to get it out were understood bv the Japanese. ”1

These days, Screamin’ Jay is a bit more sedate. He’s getting ready for an extended concert tour of France. He recently recorded Paul McCartney’s “Monkberry Moon Delight” (which McCartney once said was inspired by Jay in the first place) on the Queen Bee label. And he seems to be more shittired of the old Screamin’ Jay Hawkins phantasm-image than ever.

“If it were up to me I wouldn’t be Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. My screamin’ was always just my way of being happy on stage. James Brown, he does an awful lot of screamin’ himself, but he didn’t become Screamin’ James Brown.

“I mean, I’ve got a voice. Why can’t people just take me as a regular singer without makin’ a bogeyman out of me? My musical background is people like Roy Milton, Wynonie Harris, Roy Brown, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, Jay McShann, Louis Jordan, Varetta Dillard, Big Maybelle, Roy Hamilton, people dike that. I come along and get a little weird and all of a sudden I’m a monster or something, people won’t listen to me as a singer. I’m sqme kind of monster. I don’t wanna be a black Vincent Price (Jay was offered the title role in Blacula by Jack Hammer, which he turned down). I’m sick of it! I hate it! I wanna do goddam opera! I wanna singl I wanna do Figaro! I wanna do Le Sacre du Printemps! ‘Ave Maria’! ‘The Lord’s Prayer’! I wanna do real singing. I’m sick of being a monster.” ^