Having just witnessed the sky-blue, Devil-hating Blind Boys of Alabama, I'm suddenly face to face with a man who hollers like a demon, wears a bone through his nose and waves a smoking skull impaled on a long stick. The skull is called Henry. The "crazy man" who wields it is called Screamin' Jay Hawkins - one of the finest r'n'b shouters to ever leap out of a coffin.
Best known for I Put A Spell On You, Screamin' Jay, the freak forerunner of Ozzy Osborne, Kiss and Marilyn Manson, has been performing his pantomime voodoo since 1950s when he first put the frighteners on rock'n'roll audiences with rubber snakes, smoke bombs and explosions.
For Hawkins, it was always a matter of outan'-out show business - and, if there were to be spells without hits, at least there would always be a hit act.
Screamin' Jay is the genuine stuff of rock'n'roll legend. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1929 and adopted from an orphanage by a group of wealthy Native Americans, he studied piano at the Ohio Conservatory of Music and, in 1949, became middleweight boxing champion of Alaska. His real father, he says, was from Arabia, and his Blackfoot mother who knew all the natural cures, could make soup out of rocks. And, so, long before Jalacy Hawkins became what he calls "the crazy man", things were already quite crazy enough.
"They took me out of school in 1944 and sent me right into the hands of the Japs. I got wounded a couple of times, I got my head blown open by a hand grenade, I was in a prisoner of war camp for 18 months and then, when I came out of that, I was caught right up in the Korean War.
"I played crazy, tried to go home and I succeeded. That took three years out of my life because I spent three years in a mental institution and I never know today if there's sanity in me or insanity. I don't know if I'm right or if I'm wrong - I only know that to be nice, laugh and to smile is a rare commodity and I try to do all I can I in that department. But, at the same time, when I think of all the things that happened to me, I should either be dead by now or just wasting away in some institution. How I survived all of that, only God's got the answer."
His early musical experience saw him working with Tiny Grimes, punching Ahmet Ertegun, boss of Atlantic Records, in the middle of a recording session. His career at Atlantic suddenly over, he had stints with Fats Domino, Bill Doggett and Lynn Hope, but, tending to upstage everybody with his gold cape and turban, all engagements tended to be short-lived.
His luck turned when he was adopted again, this time by the great blues shouter, Wynonie Harris, who got him a job at The Baby Grand on 125th Street where he began to make a real name for himself. And it was a reputation which was soon to spread well beyond Harlem when a Cleveland DJ called Alan Freed began playing black artists on the radio and talking about a thing called rock'n'roll.
By 1957, Hawkins was part of Freed's all-star rock'n'roll shows at New York's Paramount Theatre along with Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers and former employer Fats Domino. And, while Freed is a figure who doesn't always fare well in the histories of rock'n'roll, Hawkins is always at pains to say that "we all had to thank that man".
"In America they had this thing where they called it race music. The music was either rhythm and blues or blues. Now here comes this man called Alan Freed out of Cleveland, Ohio, who decided to call it rock'n'roll. Now, when he came along, I came along. We met and we became friends and he created most of what I was doing.
"I was already Screamin' Jay Hawkins back then, but without all the flamboyancy - without the bone, without the coffin, without the weirdness - and without I Put A Spell On You. But, then I became tagged as the witchdoctor, the Vincent Price of Blues, the Bela Lugosi of the Macabre and all this stuff. This is what typecast me and I can't get out of it."
As predictable elements began to panic about what was happening to America's youth, it was Screamin' Jay who was one of the major causes for concern. If people were alarmed by the Everly Brothers, they were quite apoplectic about a man with a bone through his nose emerging from a coffin? And, as the new rock'n'roll became sweeter and cleaner, not only was Screamin' Jay the genuine licentious rock'n'roll article from the old days, he seemed to be the world's most obvious purveyor of what some people were still calling the Devil's Music.
"I've had this put to my face - but the Devil's music is just a phrase that has no meaning to me. They say I'm crazy, they'd say I'm full of metaphysics and occult science and that I believe in voodooism and black magic. But I just say, whatever you think, you have a right to your opinion. But it's not me. I'm just doing what I do best. And the people who talk about Devil music are doing the same thing I'm doing.
"There's nobody down here on God's green earth that's perfect. And these people would rather have Devil's music than not have nothing at all to pay their bills. But I remember even in Harlem in 1956, at the front of the Apollo Theatre at 125th and Lennox, people were walking the street with signs saying that they didn't want their children to look at Screamin' Jay Hawkins. So I went to the bank, took out $2,000, converted it into one dollar bills and I went back out there to where those people were picketing and I put a dollar in everybody's pocket. The more they tried to turn people against me, the more people came to see me. They were walking publicity!"
SO, for show after show, the new white rock'n'roll teenagers stood in line outside the Paramount, and the usual protesters walked the sidewalk proclaiming Screamin' Jay Hawkins a cannibal. Certainly Fats Domino and Jerry Lee had more hits, but Jay had the best act in town and it was to sustain him for the rest of his career.
But it was an act he would never be able to follow, and the Screamin' Jay persona was one he would never escape. It was "the crazy man", as Jay constantly refers to his alter-ego, and not the potential opera singer, who would pay the bills. And yet that overwhelming desire to sing opera is still there.
"Yeah, but I'm afraid the people will run me off the stage. They came to see the crazy man, they bought the crazy man's records and that's what they came for. And, by God, I'm going to give it to them - I'll give them anything they ask for, hoping that one day down the line they might let me do some opera.
"I really look forward to that. I want to be like Paul Robeson, Enrico Caruso, Mario Lanza, Pavarotti - I want to sing Figaro! Ol' Man River, Ave Maria and the Lord's Prayer. I want to get into it with an operatic feeling and I've never yet done it. Never had the opportunity but I want it so bad." Screamin' Jay Hawkins doesn't give too many interviews, but when he does, he tends to talk about one thing in particular - his dreams of being an opera singer. In the meantime, all he wants is for the world to recognise that there is more to Jay Hawkins than "the crazy man" with the flashpaper, the rubber snake and a skull called Henry.
"I put my soul into it, I put my body into it, I act it, I dress it, I look it and I bang on the piano. And, whatever it is, it's been good to be and it's been good for me. I'm typecast and I'm angry that I can't get out because I want to do opera - but at the same time, it takes care of bills. It keeps me working and it keeps me with the people who love me and make me want to work.
"I'm getting old now, so I don't run like I used to, but I'm glad to know that I'm still the same Screamin' Jay Hawkins. I have no complaints about nothing. Maybe one day God will let me sing opera - that's all I got to look forward to."