Hawkins’ music and outlandish onstage persona inspired generations of musicians after him. And yet, little is known of the man and little can be taken at face value. Hawkins interpreted his past with a poetic license to kill, a magical amalgam of his own making—creating disparate stories alternatively terrible or sympathetic at his will.

I Put A Spell On You brings together hundreds of interviews with Hawkins,
his family, bandmates, and contemporaries. For those needing a towpath of truth, footnotes abound to tether you through. Here is Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’s story—mean, heartbreaking, and magic.