This Is The Blues

Blues is an African-American music that traverses a wide range of emotions and musical styles. “Feeling blue” is expressed in songs whose verses lament injustice or express longing for a better life and lost loves, jobs, and money. But blues is also a raucous dance music that celebrates pleasure and success. Central to the idea of blues performance is the concept that, by performing or listening to the blues, one is able to overcome sadness and lose the blues.

Screamin' Jay Hawkins was a blues/soul singer known for his over-the-top theatricality and the hit "I Put a Spell on You." he sometimes used macabre props onstage, making him an early pioneer of shock rock some of his music has been described as "gross" .Hawkins died after emergency surgery for an aneurysm on February 12, 2000, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, near Paris
Born on July 18, 1929, in Cleveland, Ohio, "Screamin'" Jay Hawkins was a piano prodigy and boxer who worked with Fats Domino and Tiny Grimes. Hawkins had a hit in 1956 with his bombastic take on "I Put a Spell on You." His career became known for its wild stage antics, with the singer wearing bones and rising out of coffins.

Esquerita taught Richard Penniman how to be Little Richard. Thus, there is more than a little selective memory when Little Richard routinely proclaims himself the “originator” and a dose of hypocrisy when he periodically claims that Prince stole his act. This is not to diminish the monumental contributions of Little Richard in the formation of rock ‘n’ roll, though, and observers have oft-commented on how the influence of Esquerita on Little Richard was a two-way street, the former borrowing many of Richard’s subsequent innovations. Either way, the flamboyant physical humor that each brought to rock ‘n’ roll’s developments established a strain that has coursed through rock history.