The song's character lives large in Gangsta Rap. The Real Story Behind That Bad Man "Stagger Lee". Its theme had been changed from one of surviving oppression to active self-liberation. These two factors build on and consolidate the reputation Lee was acquiring as a merciless, heartless and cold-blooded killer, which makes the sheriff reluctant to risk his life to go after him and bring him to justice. The discussion drifted to politics and an argument was started, the conclusion of which was that Lyons snatched Sheldon’s hat from his head. You can ’rest everybody but cruel Stack O’Lee, The high sheriff asked the deputy “How can it be? When Lloyd Price’s version of Stagger Lee reached Number One in the US charts in February 1959, it was the first rock ’n’ roll record by a black artist to do so. Meet the creators of the story and music, watch the show change, learn more about the real-life Stagger Lee, and listen to the way musicians have mythologized him for almost a century. Secondly, Lewis makes no reference to Lee taking the Stetson from the wounded man. It was these laws that the African-American had to abide by and that were defied by the badness of the legendary Stagger Lee and other “mean types” of the tradition. A list of over 400 recordings as of September, 2008. Eyewitnesses say Billy snatched Stag's Stetson hat. As god had intervened on behalf of Joshua, as He had intervened on behalf of the slave population, so would He intervene again in the just struggle for equal rights in the South. Stagger Lee, (also known as Stagolee, Stack O'Lee, Stacker Lee, etc. 2 The definitive List of Stagger Lee Songs can be found at www.staggerlee.com/pgs/the-list.php, 3 Go to www.staggerlee.com/pgs/history2.php, 4 Go to www.staggerlee.com/pgs/history3.php, 6 Go to www.staggerlee.com/pgs/history4.php, 7 Go to www.staggerlee.com/pgs/history5.php, 8 Go to McCulloch, 2007, and www.staggerlee.com/sl/directory/artist/Nick-Cave-&-the-Bad-Seeds.html. Wearing a Stetson marked them out as free men, equal in status to the fashionable and well-heeled white men who were also wearing them. 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. Of what musical style is Big Joe Turners "Shake, Rattle, and Roll" an example ? Listen to it and we hear the evolution of modern music. Thus, in Hurt’s and Guthrie’s versions, we find not only a reluctance on the part of the representatives of white authority to risk their lives by going after the cold-blooded killer, as was the case in Lewis’s version, but a mocking of the police officer/deputy sheriff burdened with the dangerous task of bringing in the now legendary bad man. The following year the first published versions of the lyrics appeared in. The Clash, Pat Boone, Fats Domino and Bob Dylan. A version by Lloyd Price reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1959. This true, and seemingly mundane, story soon became legendary and has inspired hundreds of recordings of the song known as "Stagger Lee," "Stagolee," "Stack 'O Lee," and other variations. This is the story of how a bar-room shooting involving one “Stag” Lee Shelton became one of the most prominent narratives of 20th century popular culture in America: William Lyons, 25, colored, a levee hand, living at 1410 Morgan Street, was shot in the abdomen yesterday evening at 10 o’clock in the saloon of Bill Curtis, at Eleventh and Morgan Streets by Lee Sheldon, also colored. It’s a story that’s been told countless times, and in many of those stories Stagger Lee is the hero. recorded in 1950 and Lloyd Price’s 1958 version. As with many other blues songs, Stagger Lee eventually made it to R&B and rock and roll. “The song [spread] like a game of Chinese Whispers across the South as musicians [heard] it and [played] it back from memory with their own embellishments” (Stagger Lee). The idea that black men are especially driven sexually, and their greatest conquests are white women Of what musical style is Big Joe Turner's "Shake, Rattle, and Roll" an example? The myth of Stagger Lee was a fantasy of life without limits for these many people who lived with incredible limits to their freedom every day (Greil 66). With the advent of musical recordings, the tale eventually found its way beyond the 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. Stagger Lee is everything Cave excels at – narrative, performance, myth making. We must delve beyond recorded history. It was a version of such a prison toast that Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds came across for their foul-mouthed and aggressive rendering of the song on their 1996 album. The simple lyric is backed by hypnotic repetitive riffs and subtle slide guitars. 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. 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. They mandated “separate but equal” status for black Americans: segregation, in other words. Even Billy’s pleading for his life seems fairly incidental to this version of the story. Much like “Stagger Lee,” “Frankie and Johnny” is an American musical standard composed by — no one knows who, definitively. Lyons was taken to the Dispensary, where his wounds were pronounced serious. Artistic response to news of the shooting was immediate; the Kansas City Leavenworth Herald 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.3 Being part of an oral tradition, Lee’s name, as we shall see, went through a number of changes: Stack O’Lee, Stackolee, Stackalee, Stackerlee, Stagolee, Stagger Lee and more. He was no longer “a (nigger) boy” but a free adult male. US troops there had been racially integrated since 1950, one of the very first signs that the walls of segregation were being broken down. Against this background, Price’s army stage act of Stagger Lee was evolving in Korea. In 1931 Woody Guthrie recorded a version, Stackolee, that was closely based on Hurt’s model. This spiritual, Hauser suggests, owed its popularity to the anticipation felt in the mid-19th century when the Southern States slaves came to see that their liberation was at last close at hand. 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. So did Beck, Mississippi John Hurt, the Black Keys and Elvis Presley. Over 400 different artists have recorded this song since the first recording in 1923. At this time the moral norms of white society in the United States were rooted in the twisted laws and customs of the Jim Crow system. Like any great myth, the true origins are shrouded. To what does the Stagger Lee myth refer? Transcribed lyrics to “Stagger Lee” date back to 1903 from both Memphis and St. Louis. 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). 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. Hauser, James P, 2014, “The Hidden Message in Lloyd Price’s ‘Stagger Lee’”, www.staggerlee.com/sl/directory/artist/Nick-Cave-&-the-Bad-Seeds.html, https://sites.google.com/site/thestaggerleefiles/original-stagger-lee-essay, https://sites.google.com/site/thestaggerleefiles/stagger-lee-from-mythic-blues-ballad-to-ultimate-rock-n-record, https://sites.google.com/site/thestaggerleefiles/the-hidden-message-in-lloyd-price-s-stagger-lee, www.americanbluesscene.com/2011/05/a-brief-history-of-stagger-lee-and-billy-lyons/, www.largeheartedboy.com/blog/archive/2007/01/book_notes_dere.html, https://socialistworker.co.uk/art/12752/Little+Rock++and+the+fight+to+end+school+segregation, Misrepresenting revolution: Art at the Royal Academy, Tony Phillips’s “What can we learn from Kautsky today?” translated into German, Judy Cox’s “How Marx and Engels fought for women’s liberation” translated into German – thanks to Rosemarie Nünning, Joseph Choonara’s “Socialism in a time of pandemics” translated into German – thanks to David Albrich, Now online: Yuri Prasad and Esme Choonara’s article “What’s wrong with privilege theory?” translated into German – thanks to Rosemarie Nünning, Now online: John Molyneux’s article “In Defence of Party Building” translated into German – thanks to Rosemarie Nünning, Now online: Sheila McGregor’s article on social reproduction theory has now been translated into German – thanks to Rosemarie Nünning, Now online: Brazil: how big a defeat? On the face of it and in the terms of reference of those times and that place, this was an act of wilful “badness” in line with the “bad man” anti-hero of the folk tradition. 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. According to Levine, these benefactors to and heroes of the poor and oppressed are generated during times of great social change or upheaval and imply a desire for a return to a more legitimate order of the past (the just rule of Richard I or the intact farming family unit of pre-depression Oklahoma in these two cases). The story of Rosa Parks is an essential part of American history. But this is about all that the various songs are capable of agreeing on. It is as if Guthrie does not feel these elements of African-American folklore as intensely as Hurt, hence the relative light-heartedness of his delivery and his more distanced standpoint. Hurt returned to sharecropping for 35 years until folk musicologist Tom Hoskins located him in 1963 and he was persuaded to perform at the Newport Folk Festival, where he won the acclaim of the new folk revival audience. 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. Most notably Lewis refers to a gambling dispute between Lyons and Lee rather than a political argument as The Globe reported. The story of Stagger Lee is basically straightforward – two men get involved in a drunken brawl, possibly over something as insubstantial as a Stetson, one of them gets shot and the other is punished for his crime. And finally, the earliest recording of the song is attributed to Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians in 1923. But it was a proudly defiant way out and, as such, the noblest option available. Guthrie’s version contains this same line but it gets rather lost in the long rambling narrative into which the singer works a lot of detail and some of his usual socio-critical themes. For them, there was no idealised past which they could dream of restoring. The bad man of this tradition did not lead a fight against oppression; such a fight was doomed to failure. DJs discovered it and started to air it in preference to the A-side—the rest is rock ’n’ roll history. In September 1957 federal troops guarded black students bringing about the court-ordered integration of a high school in Little Rock, Arkansas.17. More than 100 years and as many songs later, authors Derek McCulloch and Shepherd Hendrix take an entertaining and bold look at that "Bad Man Behind The Myth & Song" in their new graphic novel, STAGGER LEE. Then “seven quick horn blasts shatter the calm”. The history of the song tells many stories. 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 ." Reality slipped away and the myth was created. Honolulu  HI  96813 Both the Lewis and Hurt interpretations share a gravity and involvement that are not to be found in Guthrie. The earliest version of Stagger Lee as neither a blues nor a white folk song, and an obvious bridge to the later rock versions, was Lloyd Price's version, which was a hit in 1959. Duke Ellington, The Grateful Dead, Woody Guthrie, The Ventures, Ike & Tina Turner, Ma Rainey and Jerry Lee Lewis. There are, anyway, many other outstanding versions of the Stagger Lee legend before as well as after Lloyd Price’s rock ’n’ roll version. The fact is that although the “Stag” Lee incident received various forms of popular expression during the first two decades of the 20th century, it was not until white people got interested in the blues that the first recordings of songs about Stagger Lee were made. reported. Both the Lewis and Hurt interpretations share a gravity and involvement that are not to be found in Guthrie. Lewis does pick up from the original report that Lee “coolly walked away” after the shooting. 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. 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. It surfaced as the theme of a major work, Staggerlee Wonders by noted poet James Baldwin, and is the subject of the book Stagolee Shot Billy by Cecil Brown. Quoted in Hauser, 2009b. Who created the Stagger Lee Myth? 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. Changing a little bit each time. We could follow Stagger Lee into the 21st century but we will leave it here. Indeed, Price’s version follows Archibald’s part one faithfully in telling nothing more than the “bare facts”—largely invented, of course—of the killing, ending at the moment when the bullet passed through Billy and broke the bartender’s glass. The more I looked into the story of the story of Stagger Lee, the more fascinating I found it. In spite of the similarities there is quite an important difference between the two versions. Some early versions like this one tended to condemn Lee’s actions as a senseless crime and offer the story as a moral warning. Hokum blues tradition as it appeared in rhythm and blues of the 1950s. By this time the song felt rather remote, not only in years but also in terms of contemporary lived experience, from its original source. Most notably Lewis refers to a gambling dispute between Lyons and Lee rather than a political argument as. Sheldon is also known as “Stag” Lee.1. Interview with Valério Arcary, Now online: Rosemarie Nünning on the history of abortion law in Germany – Between “birth strike” and “race treason”: The history of Paragraph 219a of the German Criminal Code, New to our translations page: Lise Vogel und die Politik der Frauenbefreiung (Nicola Ginsburgh on Lise Vogel and the politics of women’s liberation in German). 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. 10 Related by Maya Angelou in her book A Song Flung Up to Heaven. In reality, Parks’s individual act of resistance must be seen in the context of a burgeoning civil rights movement in which she played an active role and that gave moral support to her actions. 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. Lewis’s soft voice and quick slide work are particularly eloquent. He’s a killer and a rapist. Lee shot and killed Billy. Both Stack and Billy go to hell for their wickedness, but the bad man myth is taken. Like Archibald’s, it contains the essential familiar ingredients but with an over-the-top exaggeration of Lee’s badness. The song has lived as Ragtime, a Broadway showtune, Blues, Jazz, Honky Tonk, Country, 50s Rock and Roll, Ska, Folk, Surf, 70s punk, Heavy Metal, 90s punk, Rap. And as for the Stetson: the symbolism is weakened, for would you risk gambling away your manhood? You may republish if you include an active link to the original. When his victim fell to the floor Sheldon took his hat from the hand of the wounded man and coolly walked away. It expresses fear of the scary black man, the evolution of modern music, culture theft from black to white, hero worship of the outlaw, the origins of a legendary character and the writing of a Myth. To this day people are still singing about … The idea that some black men are especially defiant, and often driven sexually. What the bad man did was put himself beyond the morality and law of white society.9. As James Baldwin explained to Maya Angelou: survival was a main ingredient that African-Americans put into their folk tales.10. He’s also making a name for himself as evidenced by him having to tell the bartender who he is. 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. It is precisely because of the profanity and vulgarity of this genre that Cave’s version is somewhat incongruous in terms of the general 20th century history of the legend, as this thread of the oral tradition rarely made it into the recording studios or onto the music sheets. “Shot in Curtis’s Place”, from the 28 December 1895 edition of the. Some early versions like this one tended to condemn Lee’s actions as a senseless crime and offer the story as a moral warning. 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. The solemnity of the earliest versions is long gone. The Myth. What is the Stagger Lee Myth? The African-American’s struggle for manhood was an element of the struggle for freedom and equality. 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. The events of that night were immediately cast into song. To what does the Stagger Lee myth refer? (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 time, Stagger Lee's story evolved and became a part of turn of the century American folklore. Reality slipped away and the myth was created. " In his case the elements of the story were handed down to him as hearsay, something “everybody knows”. Told and retold. 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. Redhead Productions 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. 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. "Stagger Lee", also known as "Stagolee" and other variants, is a popular American folk song about the murder of Billy Lyons by "Stag" Lee Shelton, in St. Louis, Missouri at Christmas, 1895. Archibald had paved the way for Price’s development of the legend. On Christmas Eve, 1895, in a St. Louis saloon, "Stag" Lee Shelton, a black pimp, shot William "Billy" Lyons. 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. This change reflects a development in the legend. Deconstructing Stagger Lee Buster Spiller chats with hip-hop theatermaker Will Power, whose musical Stagger Lee premieres at Dallas Theater Center this week, about the show, myth … Incidentally, and as if to confirm the stereotype of Americans as being fascinated by guns, the type of weapon Lee used to kill Billy is specified in all the ­interpretations of the legend we shall look at although the original report only mentions “his revolver”. Then he introduces Lyons’s sister into the story and tells how she pleads in vain for her brother’s life. For the sake of clarity and consistency, we are going to refer to the legendary character always as Stagger Lee. The Myth and Song of Stagger Lee History of Lee Shelton and of the song. On Christmas Night, 1895, in a St. Louis saloon, "Stag" Lee Shelton shot Billy Lyons during an argument over a Stetson Hat. As we have said, Price’s version follows part one of the Archibald version practically word for word. 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. 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. But for Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, the hero was found not in Stagger Lee, but Billy’s widow. Hurt’s slower delivery focuses on the apparently absurd killing, working around the line “You done stole my Stetson hat I’m bound to take your life”. What the bad man did was put himself beyond the morality and law of white society. It was a refusal to resign to the status quo. As a white man, seeing badness as a sort of virtue, the taunting of authority, and the struggle for survival were not so integral to Guthrie’s. Originally published in April 2017. It is a tale that originated from African-American oral tradition, and it also has become a very popular story within the white community. Hurt’s carries an air of gravitas that contrasts with the relative levity of Guthrie’s interpretation. Hauser draws parallels between the jubilant tone of Price’s Stagger Lee, with the rampant exuberance of its arrangement, and the slave spiritual In That Great Gettin’ Up Morning from the previous century. That is why when I came upon Hauser’s project many years ago, it attracted me from the start. It was his manhood itself that Lee was recovering from Billy Lyons. The earliest traceable print version of the legend dates from February 1910, when a woman in Texas, Ella Fisher, sent musicologist and folklorist John Lomax eight stanzas of “The Ballad of Stagalee”, commenting that the song was sung “by the Negroes on the levee while they are loading and unloading the river freighters”. The $5 Stetson hat for which Stagger Lee shot Billy was ultimately a symbol of the black man’s manhood, his coming of age in white society. 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. The bad man of this tradition did not lead a fight against oppression; such a fight was doomed to failure. DJs discovered it and started to air it in preference to the A-side—the rest is rock ’n’ roll history.15, Lloyd Price’s innovatory interpretation of the legend broke in many ways with the familiar elements of the story, which, as we have seen, was evolving anyway. On stage he seems diabolical, a bogey man, a … reached Number One in the US charts in February 1959, it was the first rock ’n’ roll record by a black artist to do so. Stagger Lee, as interpreted by Cave is a brash and vile murderer. The bad man folk tradition among African-Americans is a reflection of the fact that there was simply no possible perspective of a better world and no tangible hope for change in the one in which they were condemned to live. So the death sentence handed out to Lee is significant. But there are also a number of new elements: bulldog barks alert us to the dispute between Billy and Lee; Billy is demonstrated to be a cheat; the Stetson is part of a wager Lee places and is gambled away rather than stolen; the bullet that kills Billy breaks the bartender’s glass. 928 Nu’uanu #503 confirms that the earliest versions of the legend would have been field hollers or other work songs sung by African-American labourers along the lower Mississippi River. We find a fascination with detail but less focus on deeper meanings. This was an example of how a man ought not to conduct himself. Lyons and Sheldon were friends and were talking together. Stagger Lee shot Billy over a $5 Stetson hat, or so the song goes. Lewis’s soft voice and quick slide work are particularly eloquent. Indeed, as the title suggests, the focus is now more on the killer than on the bar fight. More musical versions of the Stagerlee myth would follow, with composer credit often given to Lloyd Price and Harold Logan (they are given co-writer credit on Price’s version). 13 Prof Cecil Brown, doctoral dissertation: Stagolee: From Shack Bully to Culture Hero, cited in Hauser, 2009b. We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. The idea that some black men are especially defiant, often sexually driven and constantly on the lookout for white virgin females. lived experience. 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. This absurd fearful Devil metaphor appears also in country singer Tennessee Ernie Ford’s contemporary version (from 1951), which is even more upbeat than Archibald’s, in a jumpy jitterbug arrangement; more clearly tongue in cheek, too. Secondly, Lewis makes no reference to Lee taking the Stetson from the wounded man. 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