Screamin' Jay Hawkins - Biography 1980-1989
1980
The various artists LP THE LONDON R&B SESSIONS [Albion DAI 2] includes Wilko Johnson's version of Screamin' Jay Hawkins' song "The Whammy". In 1986 the album is also released on CD [Albion ALCD 9.00135]
1981
Screamin Jay Hawkins' "I put a spell on you" is featured in Burger King ads. Meanwhile Dave [...] and Tony Stoltz do bookings for Screamin' Jay Hawkins and the ChickenHawks.
12-13 November 1981
Screamin' Jay Hawkins opens the Rolling Stones concerts at Madison Square Garden in New York.
1982
Edsel Records releases the compilation LP FRENZY [Edsel 104] featuring previously released OKeh and Epic material recorded in 1956 and 1957.
April - May 1983
Paris: Screamin' Jay Hawkins recording session for Zeta.
Musicians: Screamin' Jay Hawkins
All songs released on
- [Zeta 15755]
- 1989 CD REAL LIFE [Charly Records 1963]
| Deep in your love | |
| Your kind of love | |
| Get down France | |
| All night | |
| Serving time | |
| Feast of the Mau Mau | |
| I feel alright | |
| Poor folks | |
| Mountain jive | |
| Constipation blues | |
| Alligator wine |
ca. 1983
Screamin' Jay Hawkins and Serge Gainsbourg appear live on French TV, playing a short version of the "Constipation blues".
1983
Screamin' Jay Hawkins tours Britain.
1984
In Jim Jarmusch's cult film classic Stranger In Paradise Eszter Balint proclaims "Screamin' Jay's the shit!" as she lugs a boom box blaring Screamin' Jay Hawkins' 1956 recording of "I put a spell on you" down a New Jersey street. She plays a poker-faced, newly emigrated Hungarian for whom the delirium of Screamin' Jay represents the wildness of an America she seeks but never finds - however she also says: "He's Screamin' Jay Hawkins and he's a wild man, so bug off!" Also starring in the film is long-faced saxophonist John Lurie.
- Stranger than Paradise (Internet Movie Database)
Interest in Hawkins now mounts in earnest and a wider audience begins to appreciate Hawkins's talents. He begins touring the United States regularly. Before a Boston show he tells the Boston Herald, "I am going to reach into ... [spectators'] chests, grab their hearts, fumble with their emotions, and have them walking sideways and eating chop suey with chopsticks out of their ear[s] while wearing a gas mask."
ca. 1984
...: Screamin' Jay Hawkins recording session for Midnight Records.
Musicians: Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Fuzztones
It's that time again
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27-28 September 1984
..., Jack The Ribbers: Screamin' Jay Hawkins live recording session for Midnight Records.
Musicians: Screamin' Jay Hawkins, no band
Lawdy Miss Clawdy
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Hong Kong
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Downstairs
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Cherry pie
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In her room
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Constipation blues
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I need your love
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Feast of the Mau Mau
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Let it roll
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Make the blues hard
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Bite it (Last night)
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I put a spell on you (A curse for the 80's)
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mid-1980s
While living in Los Angeles Screamin' Jay Hawkins plays at least one concert at the Hollywood Boulevard rock pit Raji's.
1985
Screamin' Jay Hawkins makes a cameo appearance in the movie Joey.
1985 and / or 1986
Screamin' Jay Hawkins tours Australia with Nick Cave (who apparently also records his own version of "I put a spell on you"). Writes Colin Hubert:
- "Nick Cave laughed. A magician friend told me that after Screaming Jay Hawkins had squeezed about a gallon of water from a lace handkerchief he had just daubed his big evil eyes with. While Hawkins played, Cave was in full view of anyone in the crowd who looked up. He laughed in public, but not on stage.[...] Mr. Cave must be supremely confident in his own ability as a performer to risk being upstaged by such a showman as Screamin' Jay Hawkins. The huge black man, in the sort of glaring white suit and tails that say overstatement, have the black wearing crowd the sort of show that Sydney never sees."
1985
New York, Irving Plaza: Screamin' Jay Hawkins and the Fuzztones live recording for Midnight Records.
Musicians: Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Fuzztones (Rudi Protrudi, ...)
Alligator wine
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I put a spell on you
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It's that time again
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Constipation blues
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16 March 1986
Screamin' Jay Hawkins appears in Dr. Demento's radio show "Bananas".
1986
Hawkins tours Australia.
Pete Townshend's new CD DEEP END LIVE! [Atlantic Atco 905532-2] includes a cover version of "I put a spell on you" (04:03). Townshend still played the song in live concerts 1996.
[before 18] December 1987
Screamin' Jay Hawkins plays a concert in Washington (D. C.).
1988
Screamin' Jay plays a blues club singer in the movie Two Moon Junction, a really dumb Southern-fried romance involving a wealthy young belle (Sherilyn Fenn of Twin peaks fame) and a muscular carnival worker. Two years later on his album BLACK MUSIC FOR WHITE PEOPLE, there is an untitled country blues track, the lyrics of which appear to be: "It was me and Sherilyn Fenn / I had nightmares what it wouldn't be like to get in..." The complete song "Sherilyn Fenn" turns up on the 1993 album STONE CRAZY.
16-17 June 1988
Paris, Hotel Méridien: Screamin' Jay Hawkins live recording for Black & Blue Records [?].
Musicians: Screamin' Jay Hawkins
Lawdy Miss Clawdy
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The Whammy
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Hong Kong
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Yellow coat
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Ain't that a shame
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Alligator wine
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I put a spell on you
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Little bitty pretty one
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Constipation blues
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Goodnight sweetheart
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Tutti frutti
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ca. 1989
...: Screamin' Jay Hawkins recording session for Spivey.
Musicians: Screamin' Jay Hawkin, Washboard Doc Trio
Let your love
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Little darlin'
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Come back to me
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It took your kind of love
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Love nobody but me
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In my dream
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Furburger [instrumental]
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I want to do it in a cave
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1989
Screamin' Jay Hawkins cameos as the sardonic night clerk of a seedy Memphis hotel in Jim Jarmusch's film Mystery train, a performance that Karen Schoemer of the New York Times calls "wonderfully subdued." Screamin' Jay is arguing with his bellboy (played by Cinque Lee) about Japanese plums, and he tells him: "Well, you should do like I do! Shit, go buy your own damn cloths over at Lanski's, somewhere like that. I mean it's like they say the cloths make the man. I mean look at that damn hat on your head! You look like a damn mosquito leg chimpanzee! Ha, ha, ha, ha!" This helps a lot to revitalize his career and Jay states that,
- Three white people who've spurred me on are Alan Freed, who put the coffin in my act; Louis Dulfon, who gave me my own license to run my booking agency here in California, which is called Hawkshaw Talent Company; and Jim Jarmusch, who came out with "Stranger than Paradise" and used "I put a spell on you" in it and put me in his movie "Mystery train".
Screamin' Jay Hawkins appears at the Telluride, Colorado film festival, where he screams on the stage of the opera house before the world's most distinguished directors, actors and art-house distributors.
12 May 1989
The Nipple Runs record a self-produced music tape including a cover version of Screamin' Jay Hawkins' "All night".
1989
Screamin' Jay Hawkins and the Chicken Hawks (with veteran Beri Southern on screamin' saxophone) on tour in Britain. They play to almost 2'000 customers at London's Town and Country Club.