It’s Halloween and we’re celebrating Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. Having died a quarter-century ago in Neuilly, France, it’s unlikely that Count Hawkins will be climbing out of a coffin this year to belt out his signature song, I Put a Spell on You.
Or will he?
As my father learned while sitting by the radio on dark nights many full moons ago: The Shadow Knows . . .
Because you can never be sure who you’re talking to—with a mask, without one or a bone in their nose as Screamin’ Jay performed—let’s trick-or-treat our way back to the days of the telephone. That hunk of avocado green plastic with a rotary dial on the kitchen wall that matched the refrigerator. Maybe your sister had a pink “Princess Phone” in her bedroom and spent hours talking to some dweeb: MOM GET OFF THE LINE!
Back to a time of visceral satisfaction when you didn’t get rid of someone with the touch of a thumb but—accompanied by a string of expletives—slammed the receiver down with a BANG!
Veteran blues guitarist Robert Ross (always a bridesmaid in the tough game of professional music) once gave the heave-ho to Screamin’ Jay and—true to the crux of his chosen style—regrets it to this day. It was 1977 or thereabouts and Ross was still living in his native New York. While punk was devouring swaths of the Lower East Side there were still plenty of clubs booking blues in Manhattan and money to be made.
“I was alone in the house when the phone rang,” remembered Ross, now living in Florida where, as Muddy Waters sang, the sun shines damn near every day. “I lifted the receiver and said, ‘Hello?’ A stranger with a very deep, grainy voice said, ‘I’d like to speak to Bob Ross.'”
Ross was alarmed by being called Bob. The only folks who referred to him that way were his parents and his Uncle Izzie and that had been a long time ago. “I didn’t know who this voice belonged to but it sure the hell wasn’t one of them.”
He stammered, “Who’s calling please?”
The deep baritone at the other end answered, “Hawkins. Jay Hawkins.” Ross didn’t know anyone by that name.
“What’s this about?”
“Mister Ross, I’m a singer and I need a guitarist for Friday night.”
Ross recalled the voice as “cavernous,” as though echoing from an abyss. The skinny Jewish kid from Brooklyn imagined a seven-foot giant with a barrel chest. Rattled, he lied and said he was already booked. By the time he put two and two together it was too late.
Curses, he said to himself. “I just turned down a gig with one of the greatest singers in history. The man who wrote I Put A Spell On You.
“At his gigs the curtain would open on a dimly lit stage and a big coffin. The lid would creak open slowly and out came a gigantic man wearing a black cape, a necklace of bones and carrying a big stick with a skull attached to the top.
“Then he would howl, ‘I put a spell on you … because you’re mine!'”
Emphasis on mine.
Burned more than once over the decades by industry suits and club owner thugs, Ross escaped Screamin’s sorcery while his paranoia dispatched another opportunity; one more “what if?” that includes a similar phone call faux pas with Diana Ross.
A strong singer and accomplished guitarist in the Delta style, he’s played with Big Joe Turner, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Memphis Slim and Big Mama “Hound Dog” Thornton. He was counseled at the beginning of his career by the great Doc Pomus, jammed at an after hours gig with Jimi Hendrix (who ignored him) and in 1971 smoked a joint with John Lennon at the Attica Prisoners Benefit at the Apollo Theater.
All without breaking out in a way that would include him in ordinary blues conversations, even among aficionados. His remarkable quote about what it’s like to be a working bluesman? “You don’t think it’s going to be this hard for this long.”
I met Ross in 1982 at No Fish Today on Eutaw Street when he played second guitar in J.B. Hutto’s band a year before the great slide guitarist’s death. We’ve stayed in touch ever since. The Screamin’ Jay anecdote came up during on-going research for a biography. Last year I produced a vinyl EP of Ross covering traditional spirituals with a slide guitar interpretation of Ave Maria as a cherry on top. It’s called Gospel Gems and was manufactured locally by Dave Andler of Morphius Records.
Though Hawkins wasn’t nearly as tall as Herman Munster, watching a six-foot-tall ghoul climb out of a coffin to bang a piano and howl like a Golden Jackal can give one the willies. Passing up the chance of a lifetime is a horror that might stay with you until your own grave beckons.
Ted Carroll will not be emerging from the netherworld on Oct. 31 at Racer’s Cafe in Parkville, less than a mile from Moreland Memorial Park Cemetery where former Oriole pitcher Dave Boswell is buried.
The lead singer will be dressing up on stage, everything from DEVO’s upside down flower pot hats to Elvis sideburns in homage to the King; a different guise for each song. Not because it’s Halloween but because it’s the crowd-pleasing schtick he employs while fronting the Plaid Anxiety band.
“I’ve got a whole box of props,” said Carroll, a 1992 graduate of Perry Hall High School and a big fan of horror films. “Shirts, wigs, hats, John Lennon glasses. I try to do something for every song.”
[Proper name for those red flower pot hats when the band bangs out Whip It: Energy Domes.]
Carroll can relate to Ross’s struggle to have the artistry of his work acknowledged, particularly in an age when people think of the blues—if they think of it at all—as hard rock with a slide guitar. Along with Plaid Anxiety guitarist and co-founder Adam Kussrow “we played originals for 20 years,” he said. “Now 95 percent of our set are covers. People in the bars like it. We’re a silly, fun party band.”
Screamin’ Jay—born Jalacy J. Hawkins in Cleveland—was a man of many talents. Long before he slipped into the macabre to pay the bills, he studied classical piano and dreamed of singing opera like his hero Paul Robeson. In 1989, he had an unforgettable cameo as a flophouse desk clerk in the 1989 Jim Jarmusch movie Mystery Train.
He appears as a sharp-dressed man in a blood red sport coat, black shirt and red tie as only a guy who buys his clothes at Lansky’s in Memphis can. He’s working the all-night shift when he torpedoes a young bellhop’s uniform with a withering critique: “You look like a damned mosquito-legged chimpanzee…”
And then guffaws to himself as only the crooner of Feast of the Mau Mau can.
Rafael Alvarez prefers All Souls Day – November the 1st of each year – to Halloween. Once he gave a paperback book to a girl announcing ‘Trick or Treat” at his door. The kid walked away crying. He can be reached via orlo.leini@gmail.com
