page_title: Hasil Adkins
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Hasil Adkins / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Hasil Adkins performing live at the Milestone Club in Charlotte, NC, on 10 May 1991.
context_page_description: Hasil Adkins was an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. His genres include rock and roll, country, blues and more commonly rockabilly, and because of his unusual playing and singing style, he is often cited as an example of outsider music. He generally performed as a one-man band, playing guitar and drums at the same time.
  Adkins was born during the Great Depression and grew up in poverty. His spirited, unusual lifestyle is reflected in his music. His songs, which he began recording and distributing locally in the mid-1950s, explored an affinity for chicken, sexual intercourse, and decapitation, and were obscure outside of West Virginia until the 1980s. The newfound popularity secured him a cult following, spawned the Norton Records label, and helped usher in the genre known as psychobilly.
context_section_description: Nicknamed "The Haze", Adkins career began in the mid 1950s in an improvised studio in his home near Madison, West Virginia. There he put his vibrant Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis influences to work by recording scores of songs, beginning with the track "I'm Happy". In a later interview he exclaimed "I couldn't afford no drums so I just stomped my feet." He eventually learned to use percussive instruments to accompany his guitar and vocals, which would become his hallmark sound.
  In 1961 Adkins headed to California in search of fame, auditioning with talent agencies in and around Los Angeles. With little to go on, he returned to West Virginia, though claimed he missed a callback from an agency a single day after departing for his home. Back at home, Adkins began performing at local nightclubs, behind a store-bought sign that read One of the Greatest Shows on Earth, the One Man Band Haze Adkins and his Happy Guitar.
  The mid-1960s brought Adkins first official release through a local micro-label, with the 45 record Chicken Walk / She's Mine. What followed were the releases of some of his most notable songs, though at the time they received little attention outside of Madison. "She Said" revealed his imaginative tone in writing, in which he compared the woman of a one-night stand he had to "a dying can of that commodity meat." "No More Hot Dogs" was a song about decapitating a girlfriend and keeping her head as a wall mount.
  Adkins began to transition from his rockabilly roots to country music by the 1970s, producing several self-released records. It was a tradition of his 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 early 1980s saw a resurgence in Adkins' fan base when the American punk rock band The Cramps did a remake of Adkins' "She Said". In 1985, he was approached by former Cramps drummer Miriam Linna and her husband Billy Miller about releasing some of Adkins' work. Resultantly they created the independent record label Norton Records and released the compilation album Out To Hunch in 1986, which became an underground success. Billy Miller soon was appointed as Adkins' manager, and together with Linna they headed to New York City for Adkins' first professional recording session, yielding 1987's The Wild Man. Upon release, the album was featured as The New York Times "Rock Album of the Week".
  By the 1990s Adkins had gained a cult following and began touring regularly, receiving offers from more record labels. In 1994 Miles Copeland III of I.R.S. Records purchased the rights to Adkins' recordings, and although an album was planned for release, it never materialized. Frustrated, Adkins soon gained back rights to some of his songs after a deal with Mississippi blues label Fat Possum, who recorded and released 1999's What The Hell Was I Thinking? and booked him a tour alongside T-Model Ford and Elmo Williams.
  In 2000 Norton released a compilation of new and previous recordings about Adkins' devotion to chicken, entitled Poultry in Motion that included such songs as "Chicken Run," "Chicken Hop," "Chicken Flop," "Chicken Wobble," and "Chicken on the Bone." In total, Adkins claimed nearly 7,000 songs to his repertoire.
  While music was his true passion, Adkins enjoyed a career in the film and television industry. He played himself as a street musician in 2004's The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, partially narrated The Red's Breakfast Experience and starred in a comedic horror film entitled Die You Zombie Bastards!. As a composer he helped score Hair High in 2004. Adkins was also the subject of the Julien Nitzberg documentary The Wild World of Hasil Adkins, distributed by Appalshop.
  Adkins was inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame in 2018.
caption: Adkins performing at The Milestone Club in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1991
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