If true punk is the defiant determination to make music without any actual musical training, the backwoods eccentric Hasil Adkins might have been a certified original punk. Writing thousands of songs with recurring themes that included chickens and decapitation, Adkins carried on a half-century, largely self-released career that inspired the Cramps, the Flat Duo Jets and the entire psychobilly genre.

Born in the 1930s in rural Boone County, W. Va., the wholly untutored Adkins – he claimed to have attended a grand total of four days of school – set out to become the world's greatest one-man band when he fell under the mistaken impression that the country stars he heard on the radio recorded while playing every instrument themselves simultaneously. As the liner notes to one of his records would attest, he played "guitar, vodka, harmonica and drums all at once." Among his earliest home recordings were defining hunks of unbridled weirdness, including the marble-mouthed 'She Said' (later covered by the Cramps) and the would-be dance craze 'The Hunch.' Still without a label by the 1970s, he once received a thank-you note from Richard Nixon after sending the sitting president his latest recording.

"The Haze," as Adkins was called (despite the fact that his first name was pronounced like "Hassle," not "Hazel"), finally achieved his little piece of notoriety when a pair of fanzine publishers, Miriam Linna and Billy Miller, started a record company to release 500 copies of his debut compilation. The couple's New York-based label, Norton Records, named for Ralph Kramden's counterpart in 'The Honeymooners,' would become a well-known champion of primitive garage music.

Following the release of 'Out to Hunch' in 1986, Adkins enjoyed two decades of cult status, cutting albums with self-evident titles such as 'The Wild Man' and 'Look at That Caveman Go!' One of his later albums, for the raw-blues label Fat Possum, was called 'What the Hell Was I Thinking?' His well-documented gruesome imagination – in the cackling song 'No More Hot Dogs,' he fantasizes about cutting off his girlfriend's head and hanging it on the wall, where she'll eat no more hot dogs – earned the Haze roles in B-movies including 'R.I.P., Rest in Pieces' and 'Die You Zombie Bastards.' He also appeared as a street musician in 'The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things.'

Adkins's strange legend was laid to rest in typically outlandish fashion when in April 2005 he was run over by a teenager on an ATV, who then drove off to run down another bystander. Adkins survived the attack long enough to suggest that the kid should be sentenced to five years in prison, then given another chance. Ten days after the incident, he was found dead in his home. Sadly, no more hot dogs for him.