Screamin' Jay Hawkins' late recordings recirculated on The Bizarre Years

The 10-track collection of songs Screamin' Jay cut for Frank Zappa's Bizarre label is due August 2. Read all about it. 

Here's the scoop from Real Gone Music...
You can have your Big Jay McNeely, Wynonie Harris, even your Little Richard…cuz when it comes to R&B wildmen, we’ll see you and raise you with Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, the craziest SOB ever to grab a microphone.

Jay’s legend begins on September 12, 1956, when, after reputedly being plied with bottles of cheap Swiss Colony wine by A&R man Arnold Maxin, he and the band cut what is probably the single most insane slab of vinyl ever released, “I Put a Spell on You.” The song became an underground hit, and launched a career spanning three-plus decades during which, in the indelible words of liner note writer Chris Morris, “Hawkins materialized on stages around the world as a shrieking, tail-dragging hoodoo creature. Rising like one of the undead from a coffin, his hair sculpted in a towering conk, his noise pierced by a pointed bone, he shook a stick topped by a skull (nicknamed Henry) in his audiences’ faces, declaiming his wacked-out songs…in a molten baritone punctuated by throat-rending howls, profound groans, jibbering wails, and guttural howls.”

The 10-track compilation, The Bizarre Years (Real Gone Music), captures the best tracks that Hawkins cut in the early ‘90s for Bizarre Records (could a label have a more perfect name for Screamin’ Jay?), the imprint originally founded by Frank Zappa and his business partner/manager Herb Cohen. Among the highlights are his two Tom Waits covers, “Whistling Past the Graveyard” and “Heart Attack and Vine,” Jay’s first-time-on-vinyl disquisition on oral hygiene, “Shut Your Mouth When You Sneeze,” and his lustful ode to the Twin Peaks star, “Sherilyn Fenn,” (Parental Advisory, y’all!). Pressed in lurid purple vinyl limited to 1000 copies, with the aforementioned notes by Mr. Morris. Bizarre indeed!

You can pre-order The Bizarre Years on limited-edition purple wax directly from Real Gone Music right here. Listen to "I Am The Cool" and "Swamp Gas" below.




Screamin' Jay Hawkins - The Bizarre Years (Real Gone Music)
Side One
1. Swamp Gas
2. Voodoo Priestess
3. I Am the Cool
4. Whistling Past the Graveyard
5. Heart Attack and Vine
Side Two
1. Late Night Hawkins
2. Shut Your Mouth When You Sneeze
3. Ignant and Shit
4. Strokin’
5. Sherilyn Fenn