{"id":14985,"date":"2018-08-16T05:30:10","date_gmt":"2018-08-16T09:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=14985"},"modified":"2018-08-17T07:50:22","modified_gmt":"2018-08-17T11:50:22","slug":"screamin-jay-hawkins-out-of-print-1990s-recordings-get-a-reissue-part-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2018\/08\/16\/screamin-jay-hawkins-out-of-print-1990s-recordings-get-a-reissue-part-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ Out-of-print 1990s Recordings Get a Reissue (Part One)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Screamin’ Jay Hawkins (born Jalacy Hawkins in 1929) is one of those artists whose influence would far outpace his commercial success. Trained as a classical pianist and singer with an operatic range, Hawkins instead gained notoriety for his outlandish persona and over-the-top vocal style, exemplified by his 1956 single \u201cI Put a Spell on You.\u201d The song’s unhinged delivery was the result of Hawkins having been drunk during the recording session, but the persona stuck, and he was added to Alan Freed’s revues. There he pioneered shock rock, emerging onstage from a coffin dressed in a cape and holding voodoo paraphernalia. There have been many covers of \u201cI Put a Spell on You\u201d since, including notable versions by Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Bette Midler (in the film Hocus Pocus<\/i>), Annie Lennox, Nina Simone and Jeff Beck.<\/p>\n

Hawkins would record sporadically over his subsequent career, and at the beginning of the 1990s he met with Robert Duffey, who would sign Hawkins to his label and act as his manager. Hawkins released three albums for Bizarre\/Planet: 1991’s Black Music for White People<\/i>, Stone Crazy<\/i> from 1993, and 1994’s Somethin’ Funny Goin’ On<\/i>. Long out of print, all three have been reissued in a new 2CD set, Are YOU One of Jay’s Kids?: The Complete Bizarre Sessions 1990-1994<\/i>. (The compilation’s title is a reference to Hawkins’ having sired more than 50 children, nearly all out of wedlock.) The three albums on Bizarre represent some of Hawkins’ final work in the recording studio prior to his death in 2000. I spoke with Duffey about his time working with Screamin’ Jay Hawkins.<\/p>\n

When you first met Jay Hawkins in 1990, it had been about seven years since he had made an album. What had he been up to in those intervening years?<\/b><\/p>\n

He was basically playing at little clubs: I went to see him a couple times at Club Lingerie on Sunset Boulevard and the Belly Up Tavern in San Diego. He was playing those places, and tiny dive bars. Minor money, but it kept him going. But really, he wasn\u2019t doing much of anything. And most of the people \u2013 99%, I’d say \u2013 had no clue who he even was. It was just this black guy playing on the stage.<\/p>\n

Did he have a regular band, or did he just pick up players for each gig?<\/b><\/p>\n

Both. He had a few guys that he played with every so often. When they weren\u2019t playing with somebody else, they did something with him, but it was only kind<\/i> of a band. He wasn\u2019t doing the [number] of shows he needed to do to support a band; that\u2019s what the big problem was.<\/p>\n

The players on his three albums for Bizarre \u2013 Mike Keneally, Buddy Blue and so on \u2013 weren’t among those, were they?<\/b><\/p>\n

No. It was all different people.<\/p>\n

What was Hawkins like in the studio? Was he focused, erratic?<\/b><\/p>\n

Well, he was fine until about 1:30 p.m. At 1:30, he would take these pills, and basically he was out of it from there on. You could record with him from 9:00 in the morning until maybe 1:00, and after that he was just gone. I know part of it was codeine. He said it was because in the war he had a bullet in the brain \u2013 now, this is Jay’s story \u2013 and he had a piece of metal put in there. It was so painful that he would have to take these pills. The reality is that he was addicted to the pills.<\/p>\n

Once the songs were chosen, did the musicians get together and sort them out? Were you or Jay involved in that process?<\/b><\/p>\n

I was more involved in the lyrics; Keneally was more involved in the music end. I would come with some ideas and he would help put them together. And a lot of times, Jay would come into the studio, sit down at the piano, and just start banging things out. We would take what he was doing and make songs out of it. He had a lot to do with writing the songs, but that\u2019s pretty much how it was done.<\/p>\n

\"\"Up until about 1:00 p.m. each day, did the sessions go fairly smoothly? Or did it take a lot of time and effort?<\/b><\/p>\n

It took a lot of time. Because between takes, Jay was just going on and on and on, reminiscing about the old days and anything else. When he would write songs, we would knock a song out in probably two or three hours, but it took a lot of time.<\/p>\n

Did he cut his vocal parts after the other musicians had done had done the basic tracking?<\/b><\/p>\n

No, he cut his vocals and piano live with the band. And then as soon as he was done with his vocals, we would do overdubs right away.<\/p>\n

Did Hawkins get involved in things like approving the mixes, or was he the kind of artist who did his bit and left the rest to you guys?<\/b><\/p>\n

He wasn\u2019t really that concerned. He just said, \u201cIt’s your thing. Do what you wanna do.\u201d We were there until probably 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning \u2013 every morning \u2013 mixing, correcting, and doing what we needed to do.<\/p>\n

The track \u201cIgnant and Shit,\u201d included on this set and originally on Black Music for White People<\/i> features a particularly spirited and unhinged vocal from Screamin’ Jay. How did that Hawkins original come about?<\/b><\/p>\n

We were goofing around. He would \u2013 I\u2019m trying to think of how to say this without sounding offensive \u2013 he would speak \u201cblack.\u201d His idea<\/i> of black. He would actually speak to me that way. So, when he was just goofing at the piano, he said something to me, and I said, \u201cJay, you ignant.\u201d And he wrote a song. We just let the tape run while he would pound some stuff out on the piano, talking to me that way.<\/p>\n

Click here to continue<\/a>…<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Screamin’ Jay Hawkins (born Jalacy Hawkins in 1929) is one of those artists whose influence would far outpace his commercial success. Trained as a classical pianist and singer with an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14991,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,41,60,64],"tags":[325,3518,3517],"class_list":["post-14985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-incredibly-strange","category-interview","category-rb","category-reissue","tag-bizarre","tag-bob-duffey","tag-screamin-jay-hawkins","cat-38-id","cat-41-id","cat-60-id","cat-64-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14985"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15080,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14985\/revisions\/15080"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}