Screamin' Jay Hawkins - "All Night"

The line between insanity and theatricality in the extraordinary case of Screamin' Jay Hawkins is as thin as the indistinguishable border that separates a scream from a laugh from the outright chortle that begins this song. Whether Hawkins' madman antics are real or performance makes no difference, since each possibility entails the other – if he is mad, then symptomatic of his instability is his compulsion to share; and if he is playing, then he is insane to present himself thus. This too: If Screamin' Jay Hawkins is a tenderhearted man, it's only because life repeatedly brought down a sledgehammer on the sinewy chunk of red meat that constitutes his heart. Hawkins takes the butcher's tenderizing violence and adds to it the stalker's violating tenderness, the combination of which yields a song of equal parts love letter and death threat. Each of the song's couplets reveals opposing sentiments: a desire to be with and to kill his "baby." Meanwhile, the band expresses the same tensions: the horns woo while the guitar barbs, the back-up singers grovel while the drums intimidate. Throughout, Hawkins delivers a thoroughly engaged comedic performance that, like much of the best comedy, verges on the frightening and hints at the tragic. [Buy]

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Cat Iron - "O, The Blood Done Signed My Name"

The way I see it, Cat Iron was one of two things: a device for the unwrinkling of cats or a cat for the unwrinkling of clothes. Almost nothing is known of the great gospel-blues player's life or personhood, and unless James Cameron finds his bones, little is likely to be found out. We know merely what we can hear: a rich baritone by turns in unison and as counterpoint to a plaintive treble melody, set by sure fingers to strummed alternating bass notes. With children playing in the background, Cat Iron sings of blood, of Christ, of pursuit and arrival, impermanence and immortality; a transient singer, just passing through.

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