Screamin’ Jay Hawkins became famous in the 1950s with his mesmerizing "I Put a Spell on You," for which, in live performance, he rose from a coffin and, garbed as an African warrior, howled and growled the lyrics with the robust voice of a Big Bad Wolf. Decades later, he was rediscovered in the 1978 Hollywood film American Hot Wax, and his great song was used for Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise (1984) and even sung by an alternative Israeli rocker for a new Palestinian film, Divine Intervention. Was Hawkins, who spent decades of anonymity on the road, just a one-hit wonder or is he among the great unsung African-American blues artists?

Greek director Nicholas Triandafyllidis believes the latter, and his no-budget Screamin’ Jay Hawkins: I Put a Spell on Me tries to prove Hawkins’s worth. But the jury is still out after this documentary, which shows Hawkins playing — sometimes well, sometimes by rote — in Europe and includes testimonials about his abilities from such as Bo Diddley and Jarmusch, the latter the subject of a self-conscious hipster interview at the Chelsea Hotel.