Screamin' Jay Hawkins, who died on February 12th, aged 70, may have been the wildest of rock 'n' wild men. Not even Little Richard or James Brown would open a performance by emerging from a coffin or leaping on stage in the costume of an African warrior.
Such antics, and a taste for macabre accessories like skulls and shrunken heads, made him a formative influence on mock-satanic versifiers like Arthur Brown, Alice Cooper and his closest imitator, the British rock musician and politician Screamin' Lord Sutch.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, he began playing piano as a child and later learned tenor saxophone, but his first career choice was boxing. In 1949, he became Alaska's middleweight champion, but took so much punishment winning the title that he decided to exchange the ring for the bandstand. Leaving the US army in 1951 after being wounded in Korea, he joined the guitarist Tiny Grimes's Rockin' Highlanders, a rhythm & blues group that performed in kilts and tam-o'-shanters.
After 18 months as the band's singer, driver and general factotum, he left to develop a solo career. In 1955, he recorded a devastating version of his composition I Put A Spell On You. The grunts, groans and screams with which he decorated what was essentially a pop ballad in waltz time were judged so disturbing that the record was banned from airplay.
Nevertheless, it sold more than one million copies, guaranteeing him the opportunity to commit further outrages on records such as Alligator Wine, The Whammy, Feast Of The Mau Mau and the (confessedly autobiographical) Constipation Blues.
Despite that title, he was not primarily a bluesman. "My first idol," he said, "was Paul Robeson" - and he might have made a creditable operatic baritone, but after I Put A Spell On You he dedicated himself to contorting his voice in the service of what has been called horror rock or shock 'n' roll. The 1957 album, At Home With Screamin' Jay Hawkins, where he sang easy-listening standards like I Love Paris, was a rare diversion.
He was primarily a performance artist, and most of his discs were less memorable than his zebra-striped capes, polka-dot suits and pink tuxedos, or his screaming, smoke-shrouded resurrection from a satin-lined coffin.
By the end of the 1960s he was working as a comedian in a Honolulu strip club. Various recording projects in the 1970s came to nothing.
Jay Hawkins continued to work during the 1980s and 1990s, albeit at a lower temperature. He had cameo roles in the films Mystery Train (1989) and A Rage In Harlem (1991), and in 1998 received a Pioneer Award from the Rhythm & Blues Foundation.
In July 1999, he and his band, The Chicken Hawks, opened the Guinness Blues Festival weekend at the Temple Bar Music Centre in Dublin.
Always popular in France, he had moved to the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, where he died.
Jalacy J. Hawkins: born 1929; died February, 2000