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(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Some people were born to perform, instilled with the kind of individualistic talents which would otherwise go wasted away in some office cubicle for decades. Debbie Harry is one such figure, rising to the very top of New York’s musical landscape back in the 1970s as the mesmerising frontwoman of Blondie.
Emerging from the dark, damp surroundings of CBGBs in the East Village, Debbie Harry and Blondie always stood out against their contemporaries. At that time, the scene was dominated by the abrasive, emerging sounds of punk rock, with the likes of the Ramones, Richard Hell, and Television often dominating the conversation. Not only were Blondie one of the only acts in the East Village to be female-fronted, but they were also among the first to expand the sounds of punk into something with a much broader appeal.
From the snarling DIY sounds of their very early material, Blondie broke into the pop charts during the late 1970s and early 1980s, establishing the sounds of new wave and creating a litany of iconic anthems along the way. Throughout their tenure, though, the core appeal of the band remained constant, in Debbie Harry’s stunning performances. A perfect frontperson in many ways, Harry blended clear vocal talent with a strong image and an unwillingness to bend to anybody’s demands.
Harry’s naturalised skill as a performer seems to be ingrained in her on a molecular level, but the Blondie vocalist also owes a great deal to her extensive range of influences. Finding inspiration in the work of everybody from Fats Domino to Lou Reed, the vocalist has been soaking up influences since her childhood back in New Jersey. Throughout it all, though, one enigmatic performer has been a constant source of inspiration: Screamin’ Jay Hawkins.
“Screamin’ Jay Hawkins was just terrific,” Harry told The Guardian in 2014. “Outrageous, bizarre, eccentric – all of the things you need in a great artist and performer.” Arguably, Hawkins had a part to play in inspiring the punk revolution that birthed Blondie, with his wild performance style and shock tactics routinely employed by various CBGB alumni over the years.
His energetic, often frightening blend of rock, R&B, and horror made the Cleveland-born performer an archetypal cult hero during the 1950s, instilled with a little more edge than the prevailing rock stars of the time. “Elvis and Jerry Lee happened around the same time, but Screamin’ Jay was more on the outside, not as commercial and viable,” Harry explained. In that sense, it is easy to see the influence Hawkins had on the early days of Blondie.
After all, like Hawkins, Debbie Harry and co were out to subvert expectations and establish a bold new sound to appeal to the misfits and outcasts of American society. ‘I Put A Spell On You’ might have been reinvented as a romance-drenched masterpiece by the likes of Nina Simone, but Hawkins’ original version was dark, frightening, and utterly captivating by design. His motives, in almost every form of his existence, were always shock and eccentricity.
So, although he rarely gets the credit for it, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins was among the most original, innovative, and important performers of the 20th century. Without his horror-infused ways, the world of punk rock might look very different, and Blondie’s Debbie Harry certainly wouldn’t have been the same.
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