#screamin jay hawkins
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The Boogie Monster- Gnarls Barkley // Psycho Killer - Talking Heads // Shopping for Blood - Franz Ferdinand // Halloween - Siouxsie And The Banshees // In the Room Where You Sleep- Dead Man’s Bones // I Put a Spell on You - Screamin’ Jay Hawkins // That Black Bat Licorice - Jack White // Pet Sematary - The Ramones // Country Death Song - Violent Femmes // Bad Moon Rising - Creedence Clearwater Revival // Always Something - Cage The Elephant // Boris the Spider - The Who // Mad Witch - Dave Gardner // People are Strange - The Doors
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?”
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SUBLIME CINEMA #606 - MYSTERY TRAIN
Jim Jarmusch’s masterpiece is an anti-romantic tribute to Memphis and its music history (and followers), and a further addition to Robby Muller’s neonic vision of America. This is a gorgeous, wandering film, and the 80′s movie that most closely resembles the 90′s indies that soon followed it.
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