Screamin’ Jay Hawkins – The Bizarre Years LP

Description

You can have your Big Jay McNeely, Wynonie Harris, even your Little Richardcuz when it comes to R&B wildmen, well see you and raise you with Screamin Jay Hawkins, the craziest SOB ever to grab a microphone. Jays legend begins on September 12, 1956, when, after reputedly being plied with bottles of cheap Swiss Colony wine by A&R man Arnold Maxin, he and the band cut what is probably the single most insane slab of vinyl ever released, I Put a Spell on You. The song became an underground hit, and launched a career spanning three-plus decades during which, in the indelible words of liner note writer Chris Morris, Hawkins materialized on stages around the world as a shrieking, tail-dragging hoodoo creature. Rising like one of the undead from a coffin, his hair sculpted in a towering conk, his noise pierced by a pointed bone, he shook a stick topped by a skull (nicknamed Henry) in his audiences faces, declaiming his wacked-out songsin a molten baritone punctuated by throat-rending howls, profound groans, jibbering wails, and guttural howls. This 10-track compilation captures the best tracks that Hawkins cut in the early 90s for Bizarre Records (could a label have a more perfect name for Screamin Jay?), the imprint originally founded by Frank Zappa and his business partner/manager Herb Cohen. Among the highlights are his two Tom Waits covers, Whistling Past the Graveyard and Heart Attack and Vine, Jays first-time-on-vinyl disquisition on oral hygiene, Shut Your Mouth When You Sneeze, and his lustful ode to the Twin Peaks star, Sherilyn Fenn, (Parental Advisory, yall!). Pressed in lurid purple vinyl limited to 1000 copies, with the aforementioned notes by Mr. Morris. Bizarre indeed!