Spellbound
Artist: Screamin’ Jay Hawkins
Release Date: 2006
If blues singer Jay Hawkins hadn’t gotten incredibly drunk while trying to record a song he didn’t particularly like, would he have become the icon he became? Hawkins always maintained that he didn’t even remember the take that resulted in his notorious 1956 underground hit “I Put a Spell on You,” which, although it never made the charts, was one of those records teenagers passed around, marvelling at his grunts, snorts, bellows, wails and shrieks, as he stumbled his way through a song that was pretty inherently spooky to begin with. Creedence re-introduced it into the rock repertoire as the opening track on their debut album, and it’s stayed there ever since. As for Screamin’ Jay, he embraced the record, making it the centerpiece of a live act that saw him carried onstage in a coffin, brandishing a flaming skull, and wearing outrageous clothing while he sang such memorable numbers as “Constipation Blues,” which became a major hit in Japan.
The Essential Collection
Artist: Tommy McLain
Release Date: 1997
Nobody in Creedence was, in fact, born on the bayou, not even one of the bayous on the Sacramento River, but there was a rich body of rock music that was. Louisiana and east Texas was the touring ground of swamp pop show bands like the Boogie Kings and Randy and the Rockets. Covering soul and country hits of the moment, driven by crackerjack horn sections, and fronted by versatile vocalists, most of these bands were doomed to local obscurity until various British fans rediscovered them in the 1980s. Among the