Screamin' Jay Hawkins' All-Time Greatest Hits by Mark Binelli

Author:Mark Binelli
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781627795364
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

All of which resulted in a marked improvement in his performances. Every time the lid of that casket launched into space, Jay experienced the fleeting joy of a condemned man granted a reprieve, unleashing howls unlike any heretofore mustered. Freed pulled him aside after a show in Philly, told him Jerry Lee Lewis, the hillbilly piano player, had asked if he should consider writing spookier tunes, maybe throw on a turban, or a mad professor’s lab coat.

His behavior grew more eccentric as the tour headed south and his alcohol intake rose accordingly. Stan knew Jay had toured below the Mason-Dixon line before, with Fats Domino and others, but he began to worry the Jim Crow gigs might be pushing him over the edge. He was starting to freak out the kids, Stan could see it in their eyes, even from the wings: a certain self-protective flinching, pegged to his entrance, or rather exit, from the coffin, Jay’s own eyes no longer betraying any trace of humor, never seeming to wink along with the joke. He’d begun sleeping in his burial suit, which took on a musty, threadbare authenticity.

When they arrived in Atlanta, local authorities had drawn a rope down the central aisle of that night’s theater, marking a clear visual indicator of the rules of the house. Coloreds would only be allowed to sit on the right side of the rope, whites on the left.

“Surprising,” Stan whispered, surveying the floor with Jay for the first time, “the promoters’ failure to secure a slightly more aesthetically pleasing line of demarcation. A long sash, perhaps, or even a clothesline garlanded with bunting or tinsel.”

Jay nodded, tipping his flask. The ugly hemp rope, waist high and tied to a pair of squat metal posts that normally held up velvet cords, looked more appropriate for lashing a tarp over a pile of shipping containers.

“Though in a pinch,” he said, “easily segmentable for multiple lynchings.”

Stan chuckled nervously. “I understand, this means of division is chosen to send a message: We ain’t foolin’. Still, a token respect for the local architecture would have been nice, no? This theater deserves a less severe touch.”

Jay, only half listening, did not even crack a smile. Stan sighed and looked away, suddenly taking in the entirety of the Moorish-style movie palace, probably built in the twenties: gilded rococo moldings, maroon seat cushions, faux lanterns throwing off smoky mood lighting, carpet befitting a sultan’s bedchamber. That rope slashing its belly like a long white scar.

“You okay, pal?” he asked softly, not looking back at his friend. “You haven’t seemed yourself lately.” There was no response. Stan whispered, “Don’t let these crackers get you down.”

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