Stagger Lee (song)
| "Stagger Lee" "Stack O' Lee" "Stack-A-Lee" |
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| Written by | Traditional |
|---|---|
| Published | 1911 |
| Language | English |
| Form | Murder ballad |
| Original artist | Frank Westphal and his Regal Novelty Orchestra (1923) |
| Recorded by | Herb Wiedoeft's Cinderella Roof Orchestra (1924) Ma Rainey (1925) Frank Hutchison (1927) Furry Lewis (1927) Mississippi John Hurt (1928) Woody Guthrie (1931; 1944) Sonny Terry (1944) Lloyd Price (1959) |
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"Stagger Lee", also known as "Stagolee", "Stackerlee", "Stack O'Lee", "Stack-a-Lee" and several other variants, is a popular folk song based on the murder of William "Billy" Lyons by Stagger Lee Shelton. Herb Wiedoeft and his band recorded the song in 1924.[1]
A cover with different lyrics was a chart hit for Lloyd Price in 1959; Dick Clark felt that the original tale of murder was too morbid for his American Bandstand audience, and insisted that they be changed to eliminate the murder.[2] In this version, the subject was changed from gambling to fighting over a woman, and instead of a murder, the two yelled at each other, and made up the next day. However, it was the original, unbowdlerized, version of Lloyd's performance that reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was ranked #456 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list.
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[edit] History
The first published version of the song was by folklorist John Lomax in 1910.[3] The song was well known in African American communities along the lower Mississippi River by the 1910s.
Before World War II, it was commonly known as "Stack O'Lee". W.C. Handy wrote that this probably was a nickname for a tall person, comparing him to the tall smokestack of the large steamboat Robert E. Lee[citation needed]. By the time W.C. Handy wrote that explanation in the 1920s, "Stack O' Lee" was already familiar in United States popular culture, with recordings of the song made by such pop singers of the day as Cliff Edwards.
In Mississippi John Hurt's version, as in all such pieces, there are many (sometimes anachronistic) variants on the lyrics. Several older versions give Billy's last name as "De Lyons" or "Deslile".
[edit] Notable versions
- Tommy Roe's 1971 version of the song went to #25 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #17 on the Canadian Singles Chart.
- The Grateful Dead recorded a version of the tale which focuses on the fictionalized hours after the death of "Billy DeLion", when Billy's wife Delia tracks down Stagger Lee in a local saloon and "she shot him in the balls" in revenge for Billy's death.[4]
- The Clash's 1979 album London Calling includes a cover of the song "Wrong 'Em Boyo" by the Jamaican rocksteady group The Rulers, in which Stagger Lee is explicitly the hero and Billy the villain.[5]
- A version by The Fabulous Thunderbirds can be found on the Porky's Revenge soundtrack (1985). Johnny Otis's band Snatch and the Poontangs perform a version in which the violence is matched by the sex.
- Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds present a version of the song on their 1996 album Murder Ballads. This version retakes a street "toast poem" on Stagolee.[6] Toasts are pre-rap poems and stories especially popular among those in "the life" and among prisoners. The song contains much swearing and shows the story from a neutral perspective; Stagger Lee refers to himself as "The Bad Motherfucker." The song also appears to set the story in the 1930s, evident in the opening line "It was back in '32 when times were hard."
- More recently, the Black Keys recorded a song entitled "Stack Shot Billy" on their 2004 album Rubber Factory. In 2005, Chris Whitley and Jeff Lang recorded their own arrangement of the song, called "Stagger Lee", ultimately released on their 2006 CD Dislocation Blues.
- A version of the song by Pacific Gas & Electric was included on the soundtrack for Quentin Tarantino's film Death Proof, the second portion of the 2007 double-feature Grindhouse. In the 2007 film Black Snake Moan, Samuel L. Jackson's character sings a boastful version of the song from Stagger Lee's perspective, titled "Stackolee". This version is based on R. L. Burnside's rendition which can be heard on the album Well, Well, Well. Blues musician Keb' Mo' performs his version in a scene from the 2007 film Honeydripper.
- Josh Ritter recorded a version of the tale entitled "Folk Bloodbath" on the album So Runs the World Away but in his version Stagger Lee killed a man named Louis Collins, and 'Hangin' Billy Lyons was the judge who sentenced Stagger to hang.
- Mississippi John Hurt recorded this song for Okeh Records in 1928. Although this venture was a commercial failure at the time, the recording has been widely appreciated in the last 50 years and has since been regarded as the authoritative version.
[edit] Other artists
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ "Herb Wiedoeft's Cinderella Roof Orchestra". Red Hot Jazz. http://www.redhotjazz.com/cinderella.html. Retrieved 2010-10-13.
- ^ "Bob Shannon's Behind The Hits: Stagger Lee". http://www.bobshannon.com/stories/Stagger.html. Retrieved 2008-03-09.
- ^ Stagolee Shot Billy by Cecil Brown
- ^ "The Annotated Stagger Lee"
- ^ "The Clash". Artist History. Aversion.com. http://www.aversion.com/bands/histories.cfm?directory=clash. Retrieved 2007-11-20.(Appears to be dead link.)
- ^ Largehearted Boy: Book Notes - Derek McCulloch ("Stagger Lee")
