Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and HenrySoon after the release of “I Put a Spell on You&r

Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and Henry

Soon after the release of “I Put a Spell on You”, radio disc jockey Alan Freed offered Hawkins $300 to emerge from a coffin onstage. Hawkins initially declined, reportedly saying “No black dude gets in a coffin alive. They don’t expect to get out!” However, he later relented and soon created an outlandish stage persona in which performances began with the coffin and included “gold and leopard-skin costumes and notable voodoo stage props, such as his smoking skull on a stick – named Henry – and rubber snakes.” These props were suggestive of voodoo, but also presented with comic overtones that invited comparison to “a black Vincent Price.” Despite the commercial success of the gimmick, Hawkins resented the schlock-factor that made him famous. He found it exploitative, and believed it undermined his sincerity as a vocalist and a balladeer. In a 1973 interview, he bemoaned the Screamin’ epithet given to him by his label Okeh Records, saying “If it were up to me, I wouldn’t be Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. James Brown did an awful lot of screamin’, but never got called Screamin’ James Brown. Why can’t people take me as a regular singer without making a bogeyman out of me?”