And above all else -- except for the recently deceased Screamin' Jay himself, r.i.p. -- this is about an observation of connection, as in the eerie and consistent way in which things can connect in one's life, again and again and again, said linkages dependent on chance occurrence and one's ability to perceive pertinent relations ...
But enough of the overt metaphysical hoodoo for now -- it'll come out as we go along. To commence, I just wanna give some context for the following word-for-word re-print of a Screamin' Jay interview/concert-preview cover story I did for STANZA, the now-defunct award-winning arts section of SDSU's Daily Aztec newspaper, almost exactly a decade ago. In preparing for the interview back then, I hit upon a fact that made me feel a connection to Hawkins in the most basic way, something even the littlest kids feel ... when they find someone who shares their birthday. When I asked Hawkins at the onset of the interview about his exact year of birth -- whether it was 1929, or 1924 as some sources had it -- he boomed out that it was indeed '29, "and I would kindly ask you to please get that right in your article!" I promised there would be no error in this precise birthdate business, and that my attention was all the more focused as we actually shared the same birthday of July 18.
This was information he received most enthusiastically, apparently putting the mellifluous baritone in good humor and trusting disposition for the rest of the interview. I was already a big Hawkins fan, having played his stuff extensively over at SDSU's student-run college radio outlet KCR (where I've deejayed since 1985, and you can now listen on the Internet at www.kcrlive.com day and night) -- especially the station-fave 1986 live album he did with the Fuzztones backing him up. As a keen fan and committed participant in unconventional radio programming, I also connected to Screamin' Jay during the interview via his glowing testimonials to the late great iconoclastic deejay Alan Freed. (Hawkins, of course, did memorable work in the '78 film American Hot Wax, which told the tale of Freed's race-barrier-smashing exploits during rock 'n' roll's earliest years.) I was reminded of Hawkins' impassioned appreciation of Freed while interviewing Anthony Gourdine of doo wop/early rock era sensations Little Anthony and the Imperials just over a year ago. Gourdine expressed remarkably similar feelings of respect and gratitude to Freed for helping his career back in the '50s -- Freed even gave him his performing name.
The story I was doing (which ran early last year in the SD Reader) had to do with Little Anthony's son Damon Gourdine having emerged as a top-notch punt returner for the Aztecs. Upon finishing a post-football-practice interview with Damon (who himself spoke well of Alan Freed and the help he gave his father), I strolled over to KCR and tracked Little Anthony's "Shimmy, Shimmy, Ko-Ko-Bop" from the same record that I'd heard the deejay preceding me play before my very first KCR shift almost a decade and a half ago. (I recall being so impressed at what a cool station this was: free enough to allow the deejay to go straight from Little Anthony and the Imperials to Iggy and the Stooges, if he had the savvy inclination to do so ... and Scott H. did ...) Okay, to close out this Alan Freed digression ... I was thinking of Screamin' Jay on my birthday this past year -- and not just because Hawkins was presumably celebrating (his last) on the same day. By chance, I'd picked out a splendid T. Rex song that namechecks Alan Freed ("Ballrooms of Mars") to do as part of the special birthday show my band the Free*Stars was doing ("Part 1" of our "Free*Stars Birthday Trilogy Series"). It wasn't until I was singing the tune's Alan Freed-toasting line live at the Live Wire bar that it occurred to me how coincidentally fitting this was to do on Jay's birthday
... Later, on the occasion of "Part 2" of the "Free*Stars Birthday Trilogy Series" (9-22-99), I was explaining to bandmate/birthday boy Jim G. how Hawkins was the link between our respective birthday events: We were doing all Nina Simone covers that night -- or, at least, songs as interpreted by Simone whether she authored them or not -- and I noted to Jim that, although he hadn't picked it out for us to do, one of Nina's most famous recordings was, yes, the only other version of Hawkins' 1956 signature hit "I Put a Spell on You" that comes close to the Screamin' Jay original ... And, I tell you truthfully, as I sit here in this chair outlining in my mind these things to put down in/as this ramblin' preamble, the NPR announcer has now -- just now -- informed that Nina Simone turns 67 today -- this very day, 2-21-00 -- her birthday ...
So, how much of the following decade-old interview
checks out factually? Well, I'm inclined to believe it all -- although
the planned Jarmusch-directed story of Hawkins' life never happened --
and, anyway, Jalacy/Jay/Screamin' Jay told all with the sense of drama
and conviction that made his telling of the tales the most important thing,
a form of art in itself, from an eccentric original that I feel privileged
to have gotten to know a bit better ... -- D.R.S.
STANZA
Daily Aztec Weekly Arts and Entertainment
Mar. 28 -- Apr. 3, 1990
Screamin' Jay Hawkins Storytellin' with
the King of Hoodoo Rock
Story by David R. Stampone
When rock 'n' roll forefather Screamin' Jay Hawkins appears on stage, he is never alone. Even without his band, the flamboyant legend would still have several selves -- three by his own count -- to keep him company, though only one emerges in performance.
There is always another presence though, a separate entity, an essential component in the Hawkins experience that Screamin' Jay devotees expect and demand. "They want Henry!" explained Hawkins by phone last Sunday afternoon. "When I introduce the band, they want an introduction for Henry, so I pick him up and say, 'Ladies and gentlemen, I'm sorry; here's Henry!' and then I can get on with the show.”
"He's gotten to be a very important part of the show and I'm grateful for that, though everybody knows he ain't nothin' but a plastic skull. He's been with me 46 years and been painted so many times he looks horrible, with a bunch of bats and snakes and worms and shrunken heads hanging from beneath his head ... "Even in the airports, they're scared to death of him. They ask, 'What is that?' and I say, 'It's a petrified mummy and if you open it up, you gonna get dust on you and it's gonna give you elephantiasis and leprosy and everything!' "I usually have some talcum powder or salt in my pocket -- I do that on purpose -- and I watch them lookin' at Henry and then I go, 'Hoo now!' and throw the stuff up in the air and say, 'See, you grabbed him too quick and now you gonna turn all black in one week! And your children are gonna turn all black! And then,'" said the all-time King of Hoodoo Rock with a fiendish chuckle, "'I'll be able to call you brother ...'" A classic Hawkins yarn.
After all, the man has made an incredibly colorful career out of being alternately, at times simultaneously spooky and hilarious, a complete original who's been operating on the fringes since the '40s. Still committed to to bringing his good-time lunacy to the faithful, as he will this Thursday at the Belly Up Tavern, Hawkins has also become known to a far wider audience of late, courtesy of his choice role as the hotel night clerk in Jim Jarmusch's brilliant film of last year, Mystery Train. With more movie deals in the works, including a life-story film on Hawkins to be directed by Jarmusch, the 60-year-old singer/songwriter/musician/actor is quite possibly hotter than ever -- and getting hotter. And man, can he ever still tell a tale…
[jump to interior page]
As far as stories go, surely none could play better than the life of Screamin' Jay Hawkins. Any film on the topic obviously would have a fascinating plotline already working for it, and with the talented Jarmusch at the helm of just such a project (not to mention Hawkins himself around to star in it), the planned movie, set to begin shooting in November, sounds promising indeed.
"The name of the picture will be The Incredible Paradox," revealed Hawkins. "The reason for that is the three people -- I've got three personalities. There's 'Screamin' Jay Hawkins,' there's 'Jay Hawkins' and there's 'Jalacy Hawkins,' which is the name on my birth certificate, my driving license and Social Security card -- it's the name I use for business. 'Jay Hawkins' is the hoodlum but 'Jalacy Hawkins' is the intelligent one; he'll sit down and discuss things.
"'Jay Hawkins' you don't want to hear nothin' from -- he's the one they put in the service, he was so bad ... I bring him out when things look like they're gonna get bad, when it looks like a group of gentlemen may want to go through my pockets with or without my permission. "And 'Screamin' Jay Hawkins' is the workhorse, the one that gets out on stage and earns a living for the other two idiots; I call 'em idiots 'cause they all get me in trouble."
Born in Cleveland but raised in Hawaii, Hawkins had a rough childhood that culminated in being taken out of school at age 14 and somewhat forced into military service the following year -- just in time to be taken hostage by the Japanese and serve the last 18 months of World War II in a POW camp in Saipan.
In recalling this period of his life, Hawkins spoke of a bleak, torturous reality that makes his entertainment persona of spell-weaving-witchdoctor-headlining-a-hootenanny-down-at-the-graveyard seem all the more like the lighthearted fun it is in comparison. In other words, charging Hawkins with being earnestly lugubrious and seriously addled on account of his stage act (or maybe indicting him with a Satanic affiliation, as certain Bible-thumping pinheads would no doubt do) is especially ironic given this simple fact: The guy has already seen hell on earth and fought off the darkness to keep his sanity ...
"For 18 months, they beat me every day," Hawkins grimly recounted of his POW inter(n)ment. "They didn't believe in the Geneva Convention's or the Marquis of Queensbury's rules either. They pulled out all my toenails and fingernails; they stabbed me to wake me up ... and I told the Japanese commandant, 'I don't have any secrets and I don't know nothin' -- I don't know about manpower or tanks or anything, 'cause they don't tell us nothin' -- we just fight and do what we're told ... so your best bet is to go ahead and kill me now, 'cause if I get the opportunity, so help me God, I will kill you ...'"
Upon liberation of the camp by American Marines and Australian commandos, Hawkins' mind was still with him, but he at first could not think of anything but visiting retributiion on the sadistic commandant. "I just asked for one thing, a .45 Thompson submachine gun, and they said, 'You look too weak,' and I said, 'But the determination is there; get the hell out of my way,' and I snatched a hand grenade from another sergeant as well. I broke in to the commandant's quarters through his bathroom window where there were four Americans with guns on him and I said, 'Get out, all of you, it's my job now, I've been here 18 months and I've got every right to do what I'm about to do.' One guy said, 'You need any help?' and I said, 'All I need is a rope and that chair over there.'
"And I sat the commandant down, took the butt of the .45 and smacked him upside his temple, knocking him semi-unconscious. Then I tied him up in the chair, put the hand grenade in his mouth, put some tape around it and threw some water on him to bring him to.
"His eyes looked down at the grenade and I said, 'This is for everything you've done to me and to my buddies who are dead and for all the people who want you dead -- it's my way of paying you back.' I pulled the pin on the grenade (I had three minutes to get out) and walked down the steps, walked about 500 feet away and laid down on the ground. I peeped up at the place and saw all the windows and roof coming off 'cause other munitions had been in there ... and I just sat there crying that I couldn't kill him anymore ... and I said, 'Well, I guess we're finished fighting; I guess it's over.'"
After serving a total of 14 years, including time in Korea, Hawkins parted ways with the military to pursue his music career. This of course made him a witness and participant in the birth of rock 'n' roll, and he remembers pivotal DJ and promoter Alan Freed fondly.
"He was the first white man to put black music on white radio," Hawkins reflected. "He (also) said (to Hawkins), 'You would have a better act if you would use this,' and turned around and pointed to a coffin." Of course, Hawkins followed Freed's advice, and a trademark prop was established, copied through the years by various performers (Alice Cooper comes immediately to mind) but still identified with and employed by Screamin' Jay.
Another Screamin' Jay trademark has made yet another
comeback courtesy of a current beer commercial -- his immortal hit
"I Put a Spell on You." Although prominently featured in Jarmusch's
1984 film Stranger Than Paradise, the song never became as
big as it could've when released in the early '50s, due to a ban for a
suggestively cannibalistic sound at its end. "Sure I put it in there, to
be different," admitted Hawkins. "Y'know, everything I do
is different ..."
