Screamin’ Jay Hawkins released “I Put a Spell on You” in 1956 on Okeh Records. Elvis Presley released “Heartbreak Hotel” and “Hound Dog,” transforming popular music—and youth culture—almost overnight.
The song that would define him was never meant to be a novelty. Hawkins later claimed he recorded it while blackout drunk, so intoxicated that he remembered nothing of the session. The record failed on its initial release, but when it caught on years later, it transformed Hawkins from a struggling musician into a cult figure.
“I Put a Spell on You” has been covered countless times and featured in films released decades after its debut. The artists and movies mentioned in this story are real. The song’s cultural afterlife is long, strange, and very well documented.
But were Hawkins’s voodoo trappings merely theatrics, or was there something more sinister behind them? Of course it was all for show—almost certainly. Still, the idea that it might not have been was enough to send several fictional possibilities leaping out of the coffin that is this author’s brain.
I hope you enjoy “I Put a Spell on You.”
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