Screamin' Jay Hawkins
At Home with Screamin' Jay Hawkins

THE REVIEW

Screamin’ Jay Hawkins is one of those cases where the legends surpass the musical stature.

One of the most insane and delirious performers of rock & roll, boxing champion, tortured during World War II – it is said that before leaving the Japanese prison camp he put a live grenade in the mouth of his torturer –, failed opera singer, father of dozens.

Nevertheless, he had a very high stature as a singer and performer. We are talking about someone who put a vocal description of a much-desired crap into music. And it was much better than many unwanted modern craps. Forerunner of shock-rock, with delirious concerts among coffins, skulls, and tribal decorations, he had a voice that smashed and twisted the sung material; and this is very well demonstrated in the album in question.

It starts with a trumpet and the syncopated rhythm of Orange colored sky, in which Hawkins' terrifying voice swells and accelerates at regular intervals. Then it moves on to Hong Kong, with a crazy invented Chinese, the slow swing of Temptation and the delirious scat of Paris, which begins like a Frank Sinatra song.

And here comes the moment we've all been waiting for. The blackest song in American music. I put a spell on you, recorded with the singer and musicians completely drunk. According to many accounts, Hawkins had to listen to it over and over to learn to perform it live. The subsequent covers haven't done it justice. The song is a tribal scream, demands primitive, shouted possession, elemental. Hawkins roars, laughs – the most unsettling laugh in music –, twists, screams, with a voice that sounds like a cavern.

After that, the rest would almost seem superfluous. There are, however, still, almost surprisingly, one after another, the clean gospel of Swing low sweet chariot, Chuck Berry-like rock & roll of Yellow coat, the blues ballad of Old Man River and, in closing, the rhythm & blues of You make me love.

We find ourselves, therefore, in front of an album that touches practically all the genres of the '50s, each seen under the distorted lens of a madman and reinterpreted by his immense voice.


Genres: Rhythm and blues, Rock n' roll, Gospel, Blues