Recording sessions followed for Timely/Apollo and then for Mercury/Wing. "Baptize Me In Wine" was laid down in 1954. By now he was under the management of Stan Pat, Grand's A&R man. Late in 1953, Herb Slotkin had started his Grand label in Philadelphia, and he states that Screamin' Jay phoned up one day and asked him if he would be interested in recording. Slotkin agreed to give a listen and they arranged to meet in a club where Hawkins was working. The outcome was a session at the Reco-Art Studios in Philadelphia early in November 1955, co-incidentally, the same studios which were being used by Gotham at that time. Five titles were recorded, of which only two were released at the time; I PUT A SPELL ON YOU was again recorded at this session. Despite Hawkins' hint of a Grand release, Slotkin left the titles in the can. The master tape gave the title of the 'flip' as $10,000 CAR but Hawkins' recollection is both better and lyrically more accurate (see below). The remaining unissued title is a fine ballad, PAULINE.
The following month, Billboard remarked that Hawkins, 'who just completed a successful engagement at New York's Apollo Theater, has been signed as one of the headliners for the Philadelphia six-day Rock & Roll show beginning December 12 at the Mastbaum Theater."
The big time hit with Jay's first Epic (OKeh) session. Producer Arnold Maxon insisted that Jay's re-recording of "Spell" live up to its "weird" title. His suggestion: turn the session into a picnic, supply Jay and the musicians with enough barbecued ribs and chicken, yams and sweet potato pie, wine, beer and whiskey, then turn on the tape:
When we started recording, we started out with a slow version. A week later I was sitting at home, and they bring me a 78 of the thing. I put it on, I played it again and again. I thought they'd lied to me: this couldn't possibly be me singing like that. So I tried to see if I could reproduce that style of singing. I contorted my mouth this way and that. I couldn't do it. Finally I poured myself some J&B Scotch, poured that down, and then I was able to do it like the record.
The snorting "cannibalistic" delivery got "I Put A Spell On You" banned from radio stations across the country. According to legend, Jay refused to believe that the bloodcurdling baritone on the recording was his. When confronted with photographic evidence, he burned a copy of the record. An edited version, minus the scarifying grunts and groans, replaced it in airplay. The single never charted, but it sold throughout the late fifties to eager teens anxious to embrace its spooky beauty and strangeness, and it remains Jay's prime piece of real estate. A year later it was cut for Columbia in New York and thirty years later, there were more than two dozen versions by other artists (vide infra). As Hawkins recalled:
On
Grand Records was the first I PUT A SPELL ON YOU. That was a sweet
love song. On the other side $10,000 LINCOLN CONTINENTAL. Then I moved
to Columbia and for their subsidiary company, Okeh, I re-recorded
I PUT A SPELL ON YOU, with the weird screams, grunts and groans. That
was the one that was a hit.
SJH covered a lot of territory during his brief tenure (1956-58) at the Epic label. Those tracks communicate-that unrestrained sense of fun that forms the core of the best first-era rock 'n' roll; the guts and joy and chops of someone who's lived, and not just learned about, blues and jump and R&B. "Little Demon," the "Spell" single's flip, is an easy-gait rocker about another love-spurned critter who's "gonna run through the world till he understands his pain." "You Ain't Foolin' Me," sports a big boss ballsy jump delivery. "Hong Kong" belongs in the canon of Orient fixated fifties rock 'n' roll.
Jay's indefatigable sense of style comes through in his music, his stage act, and his attire. When asked what he would wear to have his portrait painted, he stated:
A black suit with yellow polka dots and green stripes over that with a purple scarf around my neck, white ruffles on my sleeves, pants with white pleats on each side above white shoes, a snake around my neck, and a bone in my nose
In this vein, the song "Yellow Coat" features Dali-esque verses that culminate in the self-referential: "What walks on two feet and looks like a goat?/That crazy Screamin' Jay in a bright yellow coat!" and a sneak preview of that "bright red leather suit" Jay used to steal scenes in Mystery Train. It's also one of Jay's great grocery-list compositions, a noble tradition that includes "Alligator Wine," the motto macabre "There's Something Wrong With You" and (later) "Feast Of The Mau Mau."
I would deliberately try to concoct lyrics that created weird images for the listener. I'd go into drugstore soda fountains and steal menus, read advertising flyers from grocery stores, then sit down and see what I could come up with.
"I Love Paris" isn't the only standard or piece of "good music" Jay took a whack at. There were also "Frenzy", "Temptation" and "You Made Me Love You". Regarding the last of these three, he stated:
I said, 'I like the song and I want to do it. They said, 'How'd you like to approach it?' I said, 'Like a gay person.
"Orange Colored Sky" was another tune Jay picked for At Home With, "because I'd always dug its strange changes." "My mother liked the song," Jay says of "Take Me Back To My Boots And Saddle." "I first heard it by Gene Autrey." It's unlikely that anyone with close ties to Autrey's version would know what to make of Jay's rendition, including Jay's mom ("She wouldn't even listen to it!"). "Boots" may be the sleeper of the whole set, for it's so abundant in all the things that make Jay's music so enjoyable: a cornball chorale arrangement (the Ray Charles singers) fitted over smooth walking bass, crisp guitar solo, and Jay's marvelously funny, powerful vocal soaring past the chorale (corral?) on the bridge to growl "Woo-hoo!".
Screamin' Jay Hawkins began barnstorming the country with his coffin, his skull and his extremely odd repertoire of deconstructed standards and novelty songs.
He developed a knockout stage show which premiered to the public-at-large in 1957 on Alan Freed's Manhattan Paramount Christmas Show. He used various props, including a rubber snake, a skull on a stick, a smoke-box that had been built by an electrician at the Apollo Theatre, and a black satin cape. He was also booked to feature in Freed's 1957 movie, Mister Rock And Roll, but his appearance - in a loincloth, and with white shoe-polish on his face - ensured that this singular celluloid contribution would be consigned to the cutting-room floor.
To open his act, Screamin' Jay would be carried out onto the stage in a coffin that was in flames. This coffin was his key prop, but it was also a nuisance, particularly after the National Casket Co. forbid its retailers from selling, renting or lending a coffin to him for such irreverent uses. When "Alligator Wine'' also wandered briefly onto the charts, a rubber alligator motif was added to his act for a while.
He had an intensity and a delivery that went along with "I Put A Spell On You" and it for some kind of event. One critic described it as being on the "surrealistic borderline." From the book ``Showtime at the Apollo'' by Ted Fox comes the following anecdote:
Hawkins carried the coffin wherever he went in a zebra-striped hearse (he states, "the first expensive thing I bought was a hearse with zebra wall tires, instead of white wall tires, to carry the coffin that Alan Freed put in my act." ed. note). It so spooked the stagehands at the Apollo that they refused to handle it. To keep the lid from locking, Hawkins used to stick a piece of matchbook in the mechanism. On one occasion at the Apollo, Screamin' Jay asked one of the members of the Drifters to stick the matchbook in the lock on his way down to the stage.
They never did it. They waited patiently until I got in the coffin, and they came offstage, slammed the lid, and the sucker was jammed lock tight. That's when I found out you only got three and a half minutes of air in that coffin. When I realized I couldn't get out of that coffin, boy, I got so scared I was cryin', I was cussin', I was prayin'. I had on a white tuxedo, tails, gloves, hat, cane, spats and all.
Then I started kicking, and that's what saved me because I knocked it off its display stand and when it hit the floor it busted open. The audience thought it was part of the act, and I forgot the words. I commenced to punchin' out every Drifter I ran into. I hit about three of them and had my sights on Ben E. King. They didn't show for the last two shows. It took seven years before we started talking again.
