by theTramp
The greatest songs will always attract cover versions; artists just can’t resist singing them, you see. I Put a Spell on You is an absolute classic of a song, which is why there are so many versions available to buy, download or view on YouTube. If you love this song as much as I do then I really cannot recommend enough spending a few hours trawling through them all and picking out your personal favourites.
Now in Mostly Covers I listen to many, many versions of a song to pick out the weirdest and most wonderful for you to enjoy. This is no exception, except for the fact that perhaps the weirdest and most wonderful is the original.
The original spell – Screamin’ Jay Hawkins
Usually it’s the cover versions that prove weird and wonderful, but not so with I Put A Spell On You. If your first brush with this song was the lyrics you might well expect it to be a soft, beautiful, bluesy jazz tune. But that’s not Screamin’ Jay’s style. Remember Baron Samedi in Live and Let Die? That’s more Screamin’ Jay. His world is weird, wonderful and just a little unsettling – the witch doctor of early rock’n’roll. He wrote I Put a Spell on You in 1956, it charted but not particularly high. So here it is, Screamin’ Jay’s bewitching, unsettling spell:
MostlyFilm 