The Real Story Behind That Bad Man "Stagger Lee". Like Archibald’s, it contains the essential familiar ingredients but with an over-the-top exaggeration of Lee’s badness. Lewis does pick up from the original report that Lee “coolly walked away” after the shooting. In short, there was no way out of the dilemma for the bad man except via the hangman’s noose. Duke Ellington, The Grateful Dead, Woody Guthrie, The Ventures, Ike & Tina Turner, Ma Rainey and Jerry Lee Lewis. Stagolee was, undoubtedly and without question, the baddest nigger that ever lived. Lewis’s 1927 recorded version was swiftly followed, in 1928, by an interpretation from Mississippi John Hurt: Stack O’Lee Blues. Survival may have been until now the essential ingredient of the African-American oral tradition. Lewis’s version is in a classic Memphis blues style, where the point of a song is to tell a story and the melody line and musical arrangement are there to enhance this purpose. Akin and contemporary to these field hollers and work songs must be the “prison toasts” or street “toast poems”, a subgenre of the African-American oral tradition in which the narrator boasts of the heroic deeds of an admired lawbreaker or “bad man” (see “Interpreting the song” below). Emerging from the African-American oral tradition, the story would continuously renew itself throughout the 20th century, finding expression in various music genres from classical blues, through rhythm and blues, jazz, boogie-woogie, country, folk, soul, punk, rock and roll, ska and reggae. But it was a proudly defiant way out and, as such, the noblest option available. Although no one can agree about the spelling of the song’s name – Stagolee, Stackalee, Stack-O-Lee, Skeeg-a-lee, Stackerlee and Stagger Lee are some of the variants – and despite the heavy fictionalization of Shelton’s murder of Lyons, the song remains a source of musical inspiration. Perhaps Hauser overstates his case when he calls Price’s reinvention of the Stagger Lee legend “the ultimate rock ’n’ roll record”, for as we have seen the story was evolving all the time, often making use of the popular music genre of the day.23 While the contrast with the gravity of the earliest recorded blues versions is clear, Price’s classic version marks the accumulation of a tendency that had been visible for some time. This was an example of how a man ought not to conduct himself. Although this version, which Cave found in a book on Negro American toasts, is set in the 1930s, we can assume the genre, “a precursor of gangsta rap”, had existed for several decades but had never been recorded, the white musicologists of the 1920s being less appreciative of its authentic vulgar low-class language and unsubtle violence than they were of classic blues, which they discovered around this time. (function($) {window.fnames = new Array(); window.ftypes = new Array();fnames[0]='EMAIL';ftypes[0]='email';fnames[1]='FNAME';ftypes[1]='text';fnames[2]='LNAME';ftypes[2]='text';fnames[3]='ADDRESS';ftypes[3]='address';fnames[4]='PHONE';ftypes[4]='phone';fnames[5]='BIRTHDAY';ftypes[5]='birthday';}(jQuery));var $mcj = jQuery.noConflict(true); © 2021 International Socialism. Over 400 different artists have recorded this song since the first recording in 1923. When his victim fell to the floor Sheldon took his hat from the hand of the wounded man and coolly walked away. The bad man of this tradition did not lead a fight against oppression; such a fight was doomed to failure. 19 Greil Marcus, Mystery Train, cited in Hauser, 2009a. Here are some of the parallels between the two versions: Police officer, how can it be? Reality slipped away and the myth was created. African-Americans, says Hauser, felt a secret pride in the fact that Stagger Lee, who was after all one of them, was too much of a challenge for the enforcers of the white man’s law. The idea that some black men are especially defiant, often sexually driven and constantly on the lookout for white virgin females. Before we make the leap from Stagger Lee to Rosa Parks, we need to look at two further re-tellings of the incident, Archibald’s comprehensive rendering of the legend. In his rock history The Sound of the City, Charlie Gillett points out that Price’s record company ABC-Paramount tended to provide a loud, rhythmic and cheerful musical backing on all his records.20 So it seems questionable whether there is any deliberate ideological intention here. In this version it is Lyons himself, rather than his sister, who pleads for his life, emphasising Lee’s callous lack of compassion. The solemnity of the earliest versions is long gone. In September 1957 federal troops guarded black students bringing about the court-ordered integration of a high school in Little Rock, Arkansas.17. On Christmas Night, 1895, in a St. Louis saloon, "Stag" Lee Shelton shot Billy Lyons during an argument over a Stetson Hat. As such, for black Americans the bad man became a symbol of non-recognition of unjust white authority, an authority which as yet went unchallenged politically. The song's character lives large in Gangsta Rap. So did Beck, Mississippi John Hurt, the Black Keys and Elvis Presley. The story of Rosa Parks is an essential part of American history. It’s been refashioned as a musical, two novels, a short story, an award-winning graphic novel, Ph.D. dissertations, a pornographic feature film and a hard cider. Stagger Lee, written by Meadows Prize winner Will Power, spans multiple generations and genres. But this version was considered outstanding at least partly due to the fact that it is made up of two parts, covering both side A and B of the record release, in order to give the story the ­comprehensive treatment it seemed to warrant. Changing a little bit each time. It is an anthem of the dispossessed. A number of elements of Archibald’s version are familiar to us: it was a gambling dispute; the weapon used (in this case a .44 revolver); Billy pleading for his life in vain and citing his children and his loving wife; Lee’s callous response and the Stetson hat. Emerging from the African-American oral tradition, the story would continuously renew itself throughout the 20th century, finding expression in various music genres from classical blues, through rhythm and blues, jazz, boogie-woogie, country, folk, soul, punk, rock and roll, ska and reggae. The bad man of this tradition did not lead a fight against oppression; such a fight was doomed to failure. The “Lee and Billy story” became a central pillar of his stage act: “While entertaining the troops, I put together a little play based on it. Archibald (born Leon Gross) was a blues pianist from New Orleans and he plays and sings on the recording in a laid-back easy-going style with a very simple arrangement in which his narrative is underscored by his comfortably swinging piano accompaniment. The solemnity of the earliest versions is long gone. Stagger Lee, a hack driver and pimp living in St. Louis, shot his friend Billy Lyons in a barroom in 1895. White musicians’ interest in the blues led to Hurt, a black guitarist and singer, taking part in recording sessions in New York and Memphis around this time. So the death sentence handed out to Lee is significant. is an important source and inspiration for this account of the story of the story of Stagger Lee—Hauser, 2009a and 2009b. The personal resistance of the bad man could not be a political victory and even in narrative form more politically organised resistance still seemed to be a proposition too far-fetched to be credible; but it did mean refusing to resign oneself to the status quo and surviving with self-respect intact to face and fight another day. The story’s two parts are linked by a superb “Take it away Archie” boogie-woogie piano solo. You can arrest everybody but you scare of Stagolee, On Saturday we hanged him, we were all glad to see him die, At twelve o’clock they killed him, they’s all glad to see him die. reported on a performance of “Stack-a-Lee in variations” by “Prof Charlie Lee, the piano thumper” as early as 21 August 1897 at the K C Negro Press association. (He may have gotten his nickname from a riverboat called the Stack Lee, which had on-board prostitution.) The first time I read Stagger Lee, months ago when it first came out, I was blown away by its ambition, a sprawling blend of [loosely] historical fiction and docu-drama centering on, but not confined to, the "legend" who spawned a multitude of songs, Stagger Lee, aka Stacker Lee, Stagolee, Stack-A-Lee, Stack O'Lee. The reluctance to go after the criminal, introduced by Lewis, is given more prominence by Hurt, but in this version the killer is in the end brought to justice and hanged. Hokum blues tradition as it appeared in rhythm and blues of the 1950s. (With all due respect, sisters!). No other song has so transcended its humble beginnings and been re-invented in so many genres, in so many media and by so many artists. Perhaps Hauser overstates his case when he calls Price’s reinvention of the Stagger Lee legend “the ultimate rock. The “Lee and Billy story” became a central pillar of his stage act: “While entertaining the troops, I put together a little play based on it. But for Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, the hero was found not in Stagger Lee, but Billy’s widow. On stage he seems diabolical, a bogey man, a … To what does the Stagger Lee myth refer? Lewis’s version is in a classic Memphis blues style, where the point of a song is to tell a story and the melody line and musical arrangement are there to enhance this purpose. The latter indignantly demanded its return. Guthrie, we learn, got into popular black music through his friendship with an African-American blues harmonica player who we know only by the name of George. Sheldon is a carriage driver and lives at North Twelfth Street. Successive reworkings of the story reflect changing African-American consciousness as the social status of black Americans went from subservient second-class ­citizenship—barely freed from slave status—through the civil rights movement to full political freedom and equality before the law (although we know that even today, before that law, black lives matter less). Hauser, James P, 2009a, “Original Stagger Lee Essay”, The Stagger Lee Files, https://sites.google.com/site/thestaggerleefiles/original-stagger-lee-essay, Hauser, James P, 2009b, “Stagger Lee: From Mythic Blues Ballad to Ultimate Rock ‘n’ Record”, The Stagger Lee Files, https://sites.google.com/site/thestaggerleefiles/stagger-lee-from-mythic-blues-ballad-to-ultimate-rock-n-record, Hauser, James P, 2014, “The Hidden Message in Lloyd Price’s ‘Stagger Lee’”, The Stagger Lee Files, https://sites.google.com/site/thestaggerleefiles/the-hidden-message-in-lloyd-price-s-stagger-lee. He was removed to the city hospital. The simple lyric is backed by hypnotic repetitive riffs and subtle slide guitars. Last but not least, Guthrie puts in 12 stanzas in the same time as it takes Hurt to get through six. 22 For those interested in the magic of numbers, Stagger Lee threw seven, and his name is mentioned seven times in Price’s (and Archibald’s) song—Hauser, 2014. This arrangement evokes another old slave spiritual, frequently sung in church by black congregations and which Price would certainly have known, entitled Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho—in that the line “and the leaves came tumbling down” echoes the spiritual’s line “and the walls came tumbling down”. The Stetson was in the original newspaper report. It is with this break with the mainstream Stagger Lee tradition that we return to Rosa Parks and remind ourselves that, in the curious view of James Baldwin, it was she who helped Stagger Lee to achieve his manhood.16. He’s also making a name for himself as evidenced by him having to tell the bartender who he is. The story for Stagger Lee ‘the Mack” (Lee Shelton), also known as Stack Lee and Stack O’ Lee, is a true tale of a card game gone bad after an argument over a Stetson hat on a river boat in St. Louis Missouri in 1895. But, with the depression of the 1930s, interest in African-American popular culture waned. Each character or set of characters was based off a myth from a song popular with the African-American culture at that time. On Christmas Eve, 1895, a shooting occurred in a North St. Louis saloon that was destined to find a prominent—and permanent—place in American oral tradition. By this time the song felt rather remote, not only in years but also in terms of contemporary lived experience, from its original source. James P Hauser’s website The Stagger Lee Files is an important source and inspiration for this account of the story of the story of Stagger Lee—Hauser, 2009a and 2009b. We could follow Stagger Lee into the 21st century but we will leave it here. 10 Related by Maya Angelou in her book A Song Flung Up to Heaven. In December of 1895, in St. Louis, a guy named Lee Shelton – variously known as Stagger Lee, Stag Lee, Stack O’ Lee – shot a man named William Lyons, 25, over a Stetson hat. Having grown up in the South, Price must have appreciated and been positively affected by this.18 These events and experiences went into the development of his Stagger Lee and would find expression in his final version of the song. Lewis does pick up from the original report that Lee “coolly walked away” after the shooting. Then he introduces Lyons’s sister into the story and tells how she pleads in vain for her brother’s life. The discussion drifted to politics and an argument was started, the conclusion of which was that Lyons snatched Sheldon’s hat from his head. Both Stack and Billy go to hell for their wickedness, but the bad man myth is taken. It is an anthem of the dispossessed. At the time of the shooting, the saloon was crowded with negroes. 928 Nu’uanu #503 They mandated “separate but equal” status for black Americans: segregation, in other words. Gone is the taunting of white authority and gone, too, are Lee’s arrest and death sentence. Such an option of a return to justice was simply not available to the African-American community during the first half of the 20th century. The history of the song tells many stories. Lyons and Sheldon were friends and were talking together. And finally, the earliest recording of the song is attributed to Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians in 1923. The song was first published in 1911 and first recorded in 1923, by Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians. Now online: Syrian revolutionary socialist Ghayath Naisse interviewed on the brutalisation of Syria, the goals of those intervening and the prospects for socialists in the region. Redhead Productions The simple lyric is backed by hypnotic repetitive riffs and subtle slide guitars. (unless otherwise stated). Whereas Lewis provides an insistent moral warning as a refrain to his song, Hurt and Guthrie dwell on a head shaking repudiation almost beyond words of the evil—the cold-blooded callousness—of Lee’s crime. Part two is a development beyond the basic “facts” of the story: skipping the execution it takes us to Lee’s funeral—attended by women dressed specifically “in orange and red”: colours not of mourning, but of energy and passion, even of optimism and extroversion, offering emotional strength and resilience in the face of grief and despair. But this is about all that the various songs are capable of agreeing on. 21 In the same way that such gospels celebrated the imminent release from slavery, so may Price’s rock ’n’ roll rendition of Stagger Lee be seen as an anticipatory celebration of the imminent success of the struggle for civil … Stagger Lee shot Billy Oh, he shot that poor boy so bad 'Till the bullet came through Billy and it broke the bar Tender's glass. Transcribed lyrics to “Stagger Lee” date back to 1903 from both Memphis and St. Louis. There are, anyway, many other outstanding versions of the Stagger Lee legend before as well as after Lloyd Price’s rock ’n’ roll version. Their aims seem not only justifiable but also realisable.11. For the sake of clarity and consistency, we are going to refer to the legendary character always as Stagger Lee. As James P Hauser points out, in the early decades of the 20th century the Stagger Lee story evolved as part of a tradition where folk tales about a legendary black “bad man” served the purpose of helping African-Americans to bear the trials and torments of everyday oppression. Figures like Stagger Lee became objects of admiration in the African-American community because they stood up to and defied the white man’s system. The economy of Hurt’s narration is lost in this expansive upbeat tribute to the blues maestro. The story of bad Stagger Lee has continued to capture American’s, and then the world’s, imaginations for over 100 years. The history of the song tells many stories. The song tells the story of a murder. In the words of Malcolm X: “the white man wants you to remain a boy”. By this time the song felt rather remote, not only in years but also in terms of contemporary lived experience, from its original source. As with many other blues songs, Stagger Lee eventually made it to R&B and rock and roll. What the bad man did was put himself beyond the morality and law of white society. Stagolee was so bad that the flies wouldn't even fly around his head in the summertime, and snow wouldn't fall on his house in the winter ." For them, there was no idealised past which they could dream of restoring. Parks’s actions have often been portrayed, not as an attempt to challenge the law, but rather as a simple reaction to weariness, an act of self-preservation in order to survive to face another day. Sheldon is also known as “Stag” Lee.1. 1 “Shot in Curtis’s Place”, from the 28 December 1895 edition of the St Louis Daily Globe-Democrat, quoted in www.staggerlee.com/pgs/history1.php. A list of over 400 recordings as of September, 2008. Telling the story some 30 years after the event, there are significant differences between Lewis’s description of the event and the original newspaper article. 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