Screamin' Jay Hawkins, the original shock rocker, died Saturday in a hospital near Paris of organ failure following surgery to treat an aneurysm. He was seventy.

Back in the Fifties -- twenty years before Kiss, forty years before Marilyn Manson -- Hawkins' was incorporating such ghoulish antics as lying in a coffin, donning a vampire's cape and serenading a skull on a stick into his stage show. His nickname was well-earned, as Hawkins howled and cackled his way through fiendish originals like "Alligator Wine," "Little Demon" and "Constipation Blues," a comical account of Hawkins' stay in a Hawaiian hospital, complete with sound effects.

Growing up in Cleveland, Hawkins was an aspiring opera singer and a teenage Golden Gloves boxing champion, until he decided to put his piano-playing skills to work on the R&B circuit, at one time joining Fats Domino's touring band.

After Hawkins was fired for repeatedly upstaging the "big" star, he struck out on his own, recording his signature cult hit, "I Put a Spell on You," in 1956. The ominous witchcraft-seasoned love song was banned by several radio stations, but enjoyed more success when singer Nina Simone did a jazzy take on it in 1965.

Never managing to crack the pop charts himself, Hawkins bounced around many labels and even took a few breaks from the music business altogether, including a stint in the Sixties running his own bar in Hawaii.

Hawkins' influence on later artists often thrust him back into the spotlight. He opened for the Rolling Stones at Madison Square Garden during their 1980 tour; filmmaker Jim Jarmusch used "I Put a Spell on You" repeatedly in 1984's Stranger Than Paradise and cast Hawkins in 1989's Mystery Train; and Marilyn Manson covered "Spell" on his 1995 Smells Like Children album.

In a 1983 interview with Stuart Coleman on Radio London, Hawkins credited an obese voice teacher in West Virginia for his development. "I couldn't sing that well ... She says, 'Scream, baby! Scream, Jay.' I said to myself, 'You want a name? There it is!'"

BILL CRANDALL
(February 14, 2000)