The great occultist Jimmy Page once credited a certain band with starting "the dark image" in rock 'n' roll. This band is cited as being the first to popularize the sign of the horns, the two-finger gesture of self-respecting devil-worshipers everywhere. The bassist's name was Oz Osborne.

If you've bet your paycheck that the Halloween-y band in question is Black Sabbath, you might need to cut a deal with the devil to make rent. The band, from late-'60s Chicago, was Coven, the only certifiable black magic-practicing pop group ever to hit the US Top 40. Osborne, one of the co-founders, was no relation to one John Michael Osbourne, a working-class kid from Birmingham, England, whose band, which began calling itself Black Sabbath in 1969, would soon earn its own notoriety.

Equally strange, Coven's first album, released in '69, featured a track called 'Black Sabbath.' The band's (Under)worldview was unsubtly telegraphed across the track listing: 'Pact With Lucifer,' 'Dignitaries of Hell,' 'For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge.' Lead singer Jinx Dawson probably heard the Jamaican folktale of serial murderess Annie Palmer, the inspiration for her song 'The White Witch of Rose Hall,' from her family's Haitian nanny, a woman who claimed to be an Obeah priestess.

Dawson, who claims she's the 13th generation descendant of John Howland, the 13th signer of the Mayflower Compact, has a thing for that mystical number -- the number of witches it takes to make a coven. (When her band moved to Hollywood, the "Coven house" was at 1313 Miller Drive.) With a youthful interest in the occult, she gave the band a sinister identity long before the British Ozzy got over his Beatles phase. Infamous for their staged 'Satanic Mass' (a 13-minute version of which appeared on the group's 1969 debut, 'Witchcraft Destroys Minds and Reaps Souls'), the members of Coven supposedly signed their contract with Mercury Records in blood.

The band's horror-movie shtick did not go unrecognized. When Black Sabbath's debut came out in 1970, Lester Bangs wrote in Rolling Stone that they were "something like England's answer to Coven." But an Esquire story about satanism -- the cover featured Charlie Manson holding a copy of the Coven album -- gave Mercury the willies, and the label withdrew the album.

Rethinking the whole witch thing, Dawson caught a break when actor-filmmaker Tom Laughlin (fresh off 'The Touch of Satan') asked her to record a soundtrack song for his Native American revenge fantasy, 1971's 'Billy Jack.' The symphonic ballad 'One Tin Soldier,' so different from Coven's evil dirges, became a popular protest anthem during the Vietnam era.

Despite the success, Coven couldn't capitalize, even declining music mogul Neil Bogart's offer to make them a costumed novelty act (Bogart had better luck with another band in his stable, Kiss). Dawson eventually retreated from the music scene to care for her ailing father, though she has resurfaced in recent years, reissuing Coven records. On her MySpace page, she recalls singing at a memorial for Sammy Davis Jr., who apparently once received an Honorary Warlock Degree from Anton LaVey's Church of Satan.

Now that's frightening.