1st off,I thought "I Put A Spell On You" was originaly by Nina Simone untill I watched the movie 'A Rage In Harlem' and saw this dracula dressing cat with the craziest most outrageous pre4mance I eva seen from a live act(which is a reminisce of Little Richard & Prince's then live routine)




I stumbled on this album when I went checkin' 4 him,,



I read in his bio that he's ORIGINALY an opera singer but he got rejected becoz he was black(or 'colored' as they used to call us). It shocked me to read this becoz I don't think folks realize how much depth that man possess despite his "coffin-shock values gimmick".

Anyway,,I put a spell on you,,,becoOoOoOoOoz you miiiine

Testify
[Edited 12/24/04 10:51am]

That dude freaks me out!

Classic track though.

Don't worry theAudience, I won't be posting Biggie's "Kick In The Door".

Supernova said:

Marilyn Manson also covered one of his tunes

You guys should read this bio:

Screamin' Jay Hawkins: R&B Freak



Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ mother “wasn’t much of a mother,” he recalled. “She would have a child and drop it off at an orphanage.” “She would look at me and say ‘You’re no good, you’re gonna be just like your father.’ I said, ‘I’m going to fool you. I’m going to make something of myself.’”
With his death rock and roll has lost its second coffin-screaming star in a year. Screaming Lord Sutch killed himself last June (See GoodBye! #20, March – June 1999) and now Hawkins is gone too, age 70. His biggest hit was “I Put a Spell on You.”

Hawkins grew up in foster homes. Never one to skip an opportunity to tell a good story, he insisted that he had been adopted by a tribe of Blackfoot Indians.

As a youth he learned the piano and saxophone, and studied opera. He was also an excellent boxer, winning a Golden Gloves championship in 1943, before joining the army. His military career ended when a grenade was lobbed into his foxhole in Korea. Upon returning to the United States he began to play on the R&B circuit. It is not clear how he became so outrageous.

His first job was as vocalist, pianist, chauffeur and valet for the blues artist Tiny Grimes (the gig sounds like Jerome in Morris Day and the Time – Hawkins always seemed to have an obscure connection to the black minstrelsy). An early job playing sax in Fats Domino’s band ended abruptly because of Hawkins’ tendency to upstage the star by wearing leopardskin. He became known for his wacky vocalizations, imitating various instruments and singing his fool head off.

“I couldn’t sing that well until I went to a place in Nitro, West Virginia,” he said. “There was this big, big, huge fat lady there … just allow your mind to roam free when I say fat. Glutton, beast, o-bese. The woman made the average elephant look like a pencil, that’s how fat she was. And she was so happy! She was downin’ Black and White scotch and Jack Daniels at the same time, and she kept lookin’ at me. She says, “Scream baby! Scream, Jay.” I said to myself, “You want a name? There it is!”

He met the famed blues shouter Wynonie “Mr. Blues” Harris, who made Hawkins his protégé and helped him get his first recording contract. When “I Put a Spell On You” became a big hit, it was just the latest in a string of occult compositions, including “(She Put the) Wamee (On Me).”

The first amazing thing about “I Put a Spell on You” is that it actually worked. The song, a macabre lover’s lament, was written when Hawkins’ girlfriend walked out on him. He wrote the song in the belief that she would hear it and return, and incredibly, he said, she did. Months later, Hawkins dropped her. But it turned out to be the biggest song of his career, recorded by Nina Simone and Creedence Clearwater Revival, among others. But it is Hawkins’ 1956 original that is the most impressive.

A bright A&R man realized that the best way to make Hawkins’ original ballad into a “weird” record with novelty hit potential was to get the whole band drunk. This strategy was so successful that Hawkins didn’t even remember having recorded it. But when the song had the good fortune to be banned at a number of radio stations, sales shot through the roof and the record became a million-seller. His gargling baritone, whoops and screams ring out, backed by a honky-tonk R&B ensemble. The song is hilarious and creepy at the same time.

Hawkins was outrageous on tour. Four pallbearers would carry his coffin onto stage and Hawkins would burst forth with a bloodcurdling scream. “I used to lose half the audience when I leapt out of my coffin,” he boasted. “They all rushed up the aisles screaming in terror.” He wore flamboyant capes and turbans and stuck a bone in his nose. He used fireworks, shrunken heads, and a skull named “Henry.” He always performed drunk, he said, because getting into the casket terrified him.

Touring took its toll on the performer. The drinking was bad for his health. He burned himself severely with flash powder several times, and once nearly blinded himself the same way. He was harassed by authorities who found him lewd, and the National Casket Company banned him from renting caskets. He had to buy his own. On one occasion the Drifters, who were serving as pallbearers in a performance at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, locked him into the casket. He struggled, tipping the casket over, busted out of it and charged after the Drifters, who fled. The audience thought it was part of the act.

Hawkins never had another hit to rival “I Put a Spell on You,” but it was not for lack of trying. He released a string of relatively unsuccessful albums, and most of his songs in some way played off the exotic demonism that spurred his big breakthrough. In addition to his own compositions like “Feast of the Mau Mau” and the hilarious “Constipation Blues,” he covered, in his own inimitable style, such standards as “I Love Paris” and “You Made Me Love You,” complete with yowls and gibberish. He once said, “I don’t sing them. I destroy them.”

After many years of touring without hits, the image began to wear on Hawkins. “I don’t want to be the black Vincent Price,” he complained. “I want to do goddam opera. I want to sing Figaro.” But it was not to be, and Hawkins continued to work at being outrageous. A recent recording was titled “Ignant and Shit.” It went nowhere. But Hawkins made money touring in Europe and from royalties garnered by other artists who covered his tunes, including The Jackson Five and Marilyn Manson, both acts surely benefiting in different ways from Hawkins over-the-top oddness. He appeared in two Jim Jarmusch films, Stranger Than Paradise and Mystery Train, and also opposite Sherilyn Fenn in Two Moon Junction. On a 1991 album he sang “I was me and Sherilyn Fenn/I had nightmares what it would be like to get in!” He hadn’t lost the magic.

In death he yearned to be free of the coffin. “I wrote in my will to cremate me,” he said. “Fly over the ocean and scatter the dust, so I can be little particles in everybody’s eyes the rest of their lives.”

I love that scene in "A rage in Harlem".
He's so crazy!
/peace Manki

CinisterCee said:

Touche!

Great, great track.

(Screamin' Jay that is)

tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...rmusic.htm

theAudience said:

Ok

Harlepolis said:

Biggie samples I Put A Spell On You on Kick In The Door.

Screamin' Jay does get writing credits though.

tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...rmusic.htm