I PUT A SPELL ON YOU (LIFE OF SCREAMIN' JAY), STEVE BERGSMAN

A biography as wild as its subject and as eccentric as it is necessary. Hawkins was much more than a stage oddity: he was the pioneer of sonic chaos.
There have been many strange characters in the annals of rock and roll, but probably none as eccentric as Screamin' Jay Hawkins, and this is his story.

Known mainly for appearing with a skull and bone in his nose singing 'I Put A Spell On You', he embodied like no other artist that stereotype of the sexually insatiable black man, empowered by voodoo and feared by white America in the fifties.

But who was Screamin' Jay Hawkins, really? A madman with a coffin on stage, or an misunderstood genius? In this biography, Steve Bergsman takes us by the hand through the excesses, charms, and darkness of rock's first great showman and symbol of African American performativity, through a brutal, honest, and fascinating portrait of the man who ignited the shock & rock fuse.

Despite his marginality in the music industry, his influence is evident in later generations who have played with the grotesque and the performative as a mode of artistic and political expression.

Undoubtedly, a figure ahead of his time, controversial, extravagant and absolutely fascinating, who casts a spell even from beyond the grave.

• Number of Pages: 288
• Binding: Hardcover
• Approximate dimensions: 14 x 21 cm