Screamin’ Jay Hawkins & The Monster

A year, two years ago, he stayed perpetually oiled. Black & White Scotch. Preserved in alcohol, he used to say. Drunk. Once, in the early ‘60’s, traveling from Jamaica to Boston, he wound up in Buffalo after boarding the wrong plane at what was then, in those days before the donkey’s demise, Idlewild Airport in New York. Blearily thinking himself to be in Bean Town, he hopped a taxi and asked to be taken to a certain hotel where he had a reservation! The hackie told him there was no such address, no such hotel. Jay got pissed, jumped out of the cab and found a couple of Buffalo’s finest. They told him the same thing. It wasn’t until later that evening, whilst sobering up in the clink, that he realized he was in the wrong city. Which is pretty drunk.

He’s on the wagon these days, though. One of those cyclical drying-out periods. Coffee, lots of coffee. Orange juice. Not even a beer. And cigarettes. He smokes LUckies. Sometimes he rolls his own Buglers, but right now it’s Luckies.