Screamin Jay Hawkins

Born in Cleveland in 1929, Jalacy Hawkins was an orphan raised by a Blackfoot family who taught himself piano as a toddler and studied opera before serving in the US Army, where he became middleweight boxing champion of Alaska in 1949. His 1956 OKeh Records single 'I Put a Spell on You' — recorded in a drunken session that transformed a love ballad into a howling incantation — launched his signature character: a voodoo showman who rose from a coffin wielding a smoking skull on a stick called Henry. That theatricality made him a godfather of shock rock and an influence on Alice Cooper, Tom Waits, and the Cramps.