Screamin’ Jay Hawkins (1929-2000) was an early rock ‘n’ roll/rhythm and blues singer, songwriter, and one hell of a performer. Hawkins had an outrageous, tongue-in-cheek act. Portraying himself as some kind of crazed voodoo man, he prowled the stage with a bone pierced through his nose, carrying a stick with a skull he named Henry on top. He’d wail and carry on like a madman, grunting and making all sorts of strange vocal noises. In 1956, Hawkins made his mark with the totally wild ballad turned upside down, “I Put a Spell on You”. Screamin’ Jay had his share of bawdy tunes, too, including one he recorded in the 1990s that concerned a certain young actress he had fallen under the spell of.
Actress Sherilyn Fenn is probably best known for playing Audrey Horne on Twin Peaks. Prior to her casting on David Lynch’s now iconic TV program, which premiered in the spring of 1990, she starred in the 1988 camp/trash flick, Two Moon Junction. Here’s the IMDb description of TMJ:
A young Southern débutante temporarily abandons her posh lifestyle and upcoming, semi-arranged marriage to have a lustful and erotic fling with a rugged drifter who works at a local carnival.
Fenn, sporting a bleach-blonde look, is seen in various states of undress in the film.
Screamin’ Jay Hawkins makes a brief appearance as a club singer in Two Moon Junction. Though he’s character is unnamed, he looks to be playing himself.
Hawkins had another, more prominent acting part in Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train (1989), but his recording career was on the skids. That all changed in 1990, when hooked up with Bizarre Records. The label was established in the late 1960s by Frank Zappa and his manager, Herb Cohen, and released FZ material as well as albums by acts Frank found interesting, before folding after a few years. In the late ‘80s, the imprint was revived, though Zappa wasn’t involved. Bizarre issued three Hawkins records in the ‘90s, including Stone Crazy (1993), which features a blues number with lyrics that detail certain feelings Screamin’ Jay had for Sherilyn Fenn. Though Fenn was now famous, thanks to her noteworthy turn in Twin Peaks, it was her earlier, Two Moon Junction performance that inspired Hawkins.
From the liner notes of The Bizarre Years, a new Screamin’ Jay Hawkins compilation that’s coming soon:
The incontestable highlight of Stone Crazy was the lust-crazed “Sherilyn Fenn.” The titular actress—then a rising TV star as a result of her role as the tempting Audrey Horne on David Lynch’s episodic mystery Twin Peaks—had been the star of Two Moon Junction, a 1988 erotic drama in which Hawkins had taken a musical role. “In Jay’s mind, he slept with her for two years,” [Robert] Duffey [of Bizarre Records] says with a laugh. “I said, ‘Let’s do a song about you and Sherilyn Fenn.’”
More after the jump…