West Virginia Music Hall of Fame – Class of 2018
The West Virginia Wildman & Godfather Of Psychobilly Music
Note to Reader: Adkins’ first name is pronounced “Hassel”, NOT “Hay-sil” or “Hazel”. He always made a point of people getting his name right.
Happy Halloween. I’ve been waiting for you. This is the story of the West Virginia musician often called “the scariest man in rock ‘n’ roll.” The Allmusic Guide calls Hasil Adkins, “The absolutely crudest and wildest of all rock & rollers.”
The Trouser Press says, “ The inventor of the dirty dance,’The Hunch’, Adkins is a one man band that comes at you like a crazed lunatic from a Bizarro-world of uncertain meters and wacked-out songs.”
Are you ready? Consider this a warning. Proceed at your own risk. You may feel disoriented and get dizzy. We are about to enter the West Virginia Haunted House of HUNCH. Welcome to the Hasil Adkins experience.
Boone County’s outlaw son, Hasil Adkins, has been called many frightful things over the years including “The Boone County Butcher” and, invoking the name of the county seat, the “Madison Madman”. He has also been anointed by music critics world-wide as the “Original Punk Rocker” and “The Godfather of Psychobilly Music”.
Reviews of his recordings and live shows are populated with words usually invoked to describe criminals or mental patients. Examples of this include him being described as crazy, crude, demented, reckless, self-destructive, troubled, and wicked. And by the way, all of these examples come from overall, positive reviews of Hasil’s work.
It’s important to remember, as “dangerous” and “primitive” as Hasil was regarded by much of the music world, by the 1980s he would eventually count among his loyal fans such notable artists as Robert Plant, Keith Richards, the Kentucky Headhunters, The Cramps, Southern Culture on the Skids, and “Bevis & Butthead” creator, Mike Judge.
Hasil Adkins is proof positive that if you ignore the critics and keep at something long enough, you will finally make it. Adkins was a one-man band who played drums, guitar and sometimes harmonica. His recordings are riddled with missed chords, sour guitar leads, out-of-time drumming, and craggy, off-key vocals.
Further, there are few politically correct moments on an Adkins record, particularly the early ones. He’s written songs about cannibals, sleeping with extraterrestrials, and cutting off his girlfriend’s head and hanging it on a wall because she eats too many hot dogs.
Yet for all his perceived shortcomings, Adkins is revered by some as a great primitive artist. Supporters don’t champion Adkins because he is musically accomplished or a good singer (he is neither); they are moved by his intensity, improvisational creativity, and his bone deep weirdness.
After all, this is the guy who during the late ‘50s called himself “Elvis” Hasil Adkins, played to any gathering that wouldn’t chase him off the stage, and cranked out tunes such as “Chicken Walk,” “The Hunch,” and “She Said,”.
Whether he is wailing some mournful ode to a broken heart or spewing eccentric uptempo nonsense, no one throws himself more completely into a performance than Adkins.
Early Days
Hasil Adkins was born on April 29, 1937, among the coal mines of Boone County, WV, at a little crossroads called Jack’s Branch, nine miles south of Madison, the county seat. He was the youngest of the ten children of Wid and Alice Adkins. The family had little money. He didn’t get his first pair of shoes until he was six years old. According to his family, after 6th grade, Hasil only attended school a total of six days and dropped out at the age of fifteen.
His family lived in a tarpaper shack, owned by a coal company. Over the years the shack became a house and the family added a few small house trailers to the “compound”.. This is where Hasil lived the rest of his life, until his sudden death in 2005.
According to Graffiti magazine, as a young man Hasil knew he was going to stay out of the Boone County coal mines and pursue the three loves of his life: Girls, Guitars, & Cars. Elvis Presley placed fourth.
One Man Band
Adkins was focused on the guitar by the age of 16, and began in earnest to shape himself into a bona fide “hillbilly” Elvis, style rocker. Unlike Elvis, Hasil managed every aspect of the music and accompanied himself on every instrument. One essential element of the Hasil Adkins mythology, and the direct reason for his preferred one man band set up, is that as a kid, when Hasil would hear a record on the radio, and the announcer said, “That was by Hank Williams.”, Hasil assumed Hank Williams had not just sung the song, but had also played all the instruments. When he tried to cover that song, Hasil did his best to play it all, at the same time.
By 1955 he knew the truth about how records were made but preferred his one-man approach. The first song he recorded was “I’m Happy”, and according to Hasil, “I couldn’t afford no drums so I just stomped my feet.” He would later add a kick drum, high-hat cymbal, spoons, and washboard. At the time “I’m Happy” was not released as a record.
In 1961 Adkins put out his first record – “She’s Mine,” backed with “Chicken Walk” – and he never looked back. (He often boasted of writing more than 6,000 songs.) Record after record followed, many of them homemade. Some are so rare now they sell for $5,000, according to Oxford American magazine.
Surprisingly, Hasil proved very adept at self-promotion. His “Do It Yourself” (DIY) skills were not just confined to playing music. He created cut-and-paste flyers for all his gigs and appearances, and sent promo copies of each new release in a hand crafted envelope with a personal message to radio stations and elected officials.
It became a tradition of The Haze to mail a copy of each single he released to the sitting President of the United States. In 1970 Richard Nixon wrote back, saying, “I am very pleased by your thoughtfulness in bringing these particular selections to my attention.”
The Demented Years
By 1970 Adkins was admittedly self-medicating with alcohol and pills. He also began writing songs that were more and more outrageous. “No More Hot Dogs” talked about decapitations and brutal homicides. “She Said”, later covered by The Cramps, compared his date to a “dying can of that commodity meat.” Both of these sides eventually became two of Adkins’ most notable songs, though at the time they received little attention outside of Madison, WV.
Around this time, things went downhill for Hasil, fast. In the late 1970’s Adkins was arrested twice for DUI, and a third time on a controlled substance charge. In the early ‘80s Hasil became primary caregiver for his mother and had a series of his many “girlfriends” help him with her care. One of these girlfriends moved in to help Hasil out. Turned out she was under age and he was charged with statutory rape, convicted, and served 6 months in jail.
Two years later Hasil had moved on to another relationship that also got him in serious trouble, ending with a vicious shootout between Hasil and a jealous husband. Adkins was arrested and charged as a Felon in possession of a firearm. It was exactly at this low point in Hasil’s life that things began to happen that solved some of his problems and gave his career a huge boost.
The 1980s-Renewal, Resurgence & Norton Records
In late 1985, New York musicians, and husband and wife team Billy Miller and Miriam Linna became so enthused by Hasil Adkins they founded Norton Records to showcase and distribute his music. Miller first heard “The Haze” in the ‘70s when he found a copy of Adkins’ single, “She Said”. He later found a second single, “Chicken Walk” and couldn’t believe this West Virginia wild man had two records out there that rocked harder than anything he had ever heard.
Linna, an early drummer with The Cramps, had heard of Hasil Adkins, and encouraged her former band to do a rousing cover of “She Said”. That recording by the Cramps was the first time that most people had ever heard of Hasil Adkins.
Miller and Linna traveled to West Virginia and ended up bringing Hasil to New York City where he played a few gigs in the Village and in Newark, and left a huge impression on the NYC club scene. More than one writer has compared Hasil’s trip to the Big Apple with the movie “King Kong”, where a primitive, wild, performer is brought to the big city from the “jungles” (of Appalachia) to amaze and entertain the masses.
Norton Records released the first album entitled “Out to Hunch” in 1986. A collection of Hasil’s homemade releases, dating back to the 1950s and 60s, over time this record, which started out with an initial pressing of just 500 LP copies, sold thousands of copies and would generate a whole new audience for Hasil.
As you may recall, this was all happening simultaneously with Hasil’s mounting legal problems. By the fall of 1986 he was facing some serious charges in Boone County. The judge presiding over the case asked how Hasil was going to be a contributing member of society? Adkins’ attorney was ready for question. He informed the judge of Hasil’s recent record deal with Norton and explained that if Adkins lost six months of time in jail, he’d “miss his window of opportunity”. The judge bought the argument and allowed Hasil to spend just 7 days in jail, since it now seemed he had the means for restitution.
Jail-time served, Hasil and his new manager (Billy Miller) quickly booked shows for The Haze in Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Montreal and Toronto, where he opened for Public Image Limited. On that night in Canada, two legendary “punks”, Hasil Adkins and PiL’s John Lyndon (formerly Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten), shared the same stage. Mind blowing.
After a successful tour, Adkins returned to the Boone County Courthouse and paid the court fees and medical bills from the shootout. The judge gave him a light community service sentence of picking up litter in city parks.
In 1987 Miller and Linna once again brought Hasil to New York City, this time for his first professional recording session, which yielded The Wild Man album. Upon release in July, the album was unbelievably featured as The New York Times “Rock Album of the Week”.
Later Years, Final Days
For Hasil Adkins, 1987 turned out to be one of those years that was the best of times-his new record getting a New York Times notice which brought him some national record sales- and the worst of times-his beloved mother Alice died. He was devastated and lost. Hasil had never married, had no children, and lived in the same house with his mother, all of his life. He told an interviewer in 1988 that everyday he felt a “constant blue-ness” since his mother had died. It didn’t help that he was said to have manic depression and insomnia, among other mental illnesses.
Norton Records kept him busy and is the best source to find recordings by Hasil Adkins. One of my favorite albums from this time is an album made up of the many rock ‘n’ roll dance songs Adkins has written and recorded involving chickens. IE “Chicken Hop”, “Chicken Flop”, “Chicken Wobble” and “Chicken on the Bone”. Great songs, with an even better album title, Poultry in Motion.
In 1999 he signed with blues label Fat Possum and put out What the Hell Was I Thinking? Here a calmer version of The Haze performs protest and folk songs.
He also enjoyed having a small career in film. He played himself as a street musician in Asia Argento’s film The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, in 2004. The next year he starred in the comedic horror film Die You Zombie Bastards!
On April 15, 2005, Adkins was run over in his front yard by a teenager riding an ATV. Eleven days later, on April 26, Adkins was found dead in his home, three days before his 68th birthday.
Hasil Adkins’ New York Times obituary called him, “The ‘Wild Man of Rockabilly’ who became a cult figure among record collectors and musicians for his raw idiosyncratic music, and his outsize personality.” In the same obit, Times critic Robert Palmer adds, “Hasil Adkins is responsible for some of the most enthusiastically demented records in the annals of rock ‘n’ roll.
Hasil Adkins was inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame in 2018.
Authors Note:
SOURCES.
- RE-Search #14-Incredibly Strange Music. 1993.
- “Wild World of Hasil Adkins”. Documentary. Appalshop – 1993.
- Graffiti Magazine 2013 Hasil Adkins profiles.
- Razorcake-Fanzine. Hasil Adkins interview. 2000
- Oxford American magazine. Hasil Adkins record review. 2007
Photo sources: Norton Records | Discog | Incredibly Strange Music.
RECOMMENDED LISTENING – by the author
1. “She Said”. Here’s where it all starts. Most people either love him, or “can’t stand the racket”. I’ve used this single to kick a party into high gear, OR, clear a party late at night by threatening to play it one more time. This is the Hasil test.
2. “The Hunch”. If you make it through “She Said”, try this dance number. Hasil often told his audience that the Hunch was “the slowest moving dance craze in the country”.
Dirty dancing music as an art form. Hunch on.
3. “Peanut Butter Rock and Roll”. Listen closely and you can hear that Hasil is a decent guitar player. You can hear him keeping the beat by tapping his toes.
Peanut Butter Rock And Roll – YouTube
4. “Moon Over Madison”. A tribute he wrote to his hometown, this song shows off Adkins’ honky tonk sounding voice and ability to deliver a country & western song.
Hasil Adkins – Moon Over Madison
5. “Me and Jesus Got It All Worked Out”. Gospel music, Hasil Adkins style. A simple song that always makes me smile with its optimism and pluck.
Hasil Adkins-Me and Jesus got it all worked out – YouTube
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