TNN Weekly Weekend Reward

November 7, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Weekly Weekend Reward 

Last weekend’s Reward was Nina Simone’s  signature song:”My Baby Just Cares For Me.”

This weekend it’s her 1965 cover of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ 1956 song “I Put a Spell On You.”    One of the song’s many fans was John Lennon, who acknowledged his indebtedness to “Spell” for the bridge of the Beatles’ song “Michelle.”

Rolling Stone ranked Hawkins’ original recording of “I Put a Spell On You” as Number 313 of its 500 Greatest Songs of All Time; and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame includes it among the 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll:

Hawkins was, to put it mildly, a real piece of work.  A classically trained musician and singer, his aspiration was to follow in Paul Robeson’s footsteps.  He was a formidable talent and a natural performer who stumbled —literally and figuratively— into a rather bizarre show business niche.  Rolling Stone described the genesis of his over-the-top onstage persona:

Former boxer Jalacy J. Hawkins got loaded on muscatel before shrieking out the hoodoo of “I Put a Spell on You,” and it took a healthy swig of J&B for him to re-create his studio performance onstage, where he climbed out of a coffin. The stage prop was DJ Alan Freed’s brainstorm. When Hawkins resisted, Freed peeled off three hundred-dollar bills; “I said, ‘Show me the coffin,’ ” the singer quipped.

Nothing exceeds like excess, and Hawkins’ offstage life began to mirror his onstage conduct.  He had opened for Fats Domino and the Rolling Stones, but as he became more erratic he was booted off a bill as Jimi Hendrix’ opening act.   It became increasingly less clear whether he was still in on his own joke.   On David Sanborn’s 1988 show Night Music, Hawkins combined both careers in his rendition of “Old Man River” —an impressive Robeson hommage that quickly runs characteristically amok.

Screamin’ Jay Hawkins continued performing pretty much until he died, in Paris in 2000, at the age of 70.  Nina Simone was also 70 when she died at her home in the south of France in 2003.

In her 1992 autobiography I Put A Spell On You, Nina Simone described her life from North Carolina to Juilliard, from night clubs and LPs to an emigre’s life in the south of France.

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