Screamin’ Jay Hawkins is true to his name in his hit song, “I Put a Spell on You.”
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Allegedly, Hawkins was going to record what would become his signature hit as a love song, but producer Arnold Maxin was responsible for changing the sonic direction.
“[He] got everybody drunk and we came out with this weird version,” Hawkins recalled to the Los Angeles Times about the recording session with Maxim, according to Julia Rubiner’s book, Contemporary Musicians: Profiles of the People in Music: Volume 8.
“I don’t even remember making the record. Before, I was just a normal blues singer. I was just Jay Hawkins,” he continued.
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The song caused a stir after its release. Hawkins says that the original version sounded “cannibalistic, like a man-eating somebody,” he described, which led to the song being banned. However, after Maxim edited it to make it slightly more tame, the song became more popular. The singer leaned fully into the theatrics of “I Put a Spell on You,” as live performances show him with bones sticking out of his nose to look like horns, dressed in a lavish outfit while holding a skull as he wails the song.
His elaborate get-ups that also included shoe polish on his face, a spear and shield and, at times, performing naked with only a cloth covering his groin area, drew criticism from the NAACP and the Congress of Racial Equality.
“What’s wrong with acting like a wild warrior?” Hawkins said at the time. “I said, ‘I’m making a living. I’m not breaking the law. How dare you?'”
Though it failed to chart for Hawkins, “I Put a Spell on You” has been covered by a wide variety of artists over the past 60 years. Nina Simone made it the title track of her 1965 album. Her version of the song hit No. 23 on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. Creedence Clearwater Revival, Annie Lennox, and Alan Price are among the other artists who’ve covered it.
Hawkins’ version of “I Put a Spell on You” has been named to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll. Hocus Pocus and Fifty Shades of Grey are among the wide-ranging films “I Put a Spell on You” has appeared in.
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