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Lee Shelton (also known as Stagger Lee, Stagolee, Stackerlee, Stack O'Lee, Stack-a-Lee and by several other spelling variants) was a black cab driver and a pimp^[1] convicted of murdering William "Billy" Lyons on Christmas Eve, 1895 in St. Louis, Missouri. The crime was immortalized in a blues folk song that has been recorded in hundreds of different versions.

Lee Shelton was not just a common pimp, but as described by Cecil Brown,^[2] "Lee Shelton belonged to a group of pimps known in St. Louis as the 'Macks'. The macks were not just 'urban strollers'; they presented themselves as objects to be observed."

Shelton died in prison in 1912, of tuberculosis.

Contents 1 The crime 2 Stagger Lee as archetype 3 The songs 4 Contemporary interpretations and notable allusions 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

[edit] The crime

A story appearing in the St. Louis, Missouri Globe-Democrat in 1895 read:

William Lyons, 25, a levee hand, was shot in the abdomen yesterday evening at 10 o'clock in the saloon of Bill Curtis, at Eleventh and Morgan Streets, by Lee Shelton, a carriage driver. Lyons and Shelton were friends and were talking together. Both parties, it seems, had been drinking and were feeling in exuberant spirits. The discussion drifted to politics, and an argument was started, the conclusion of which was that Lyons snatched Shelton's hat from his head. The latter indignantly demanded its return. Lyons refused, and Shelton withdrew his revolver and shot Lyons in the abdomen. When his victim fell to the floor Shelton took his hat from the hand of the wounded man and coolly walked away. He was subsequently arrested and locked up at the Chestnut Street Station. Lyons was taken to the Dispensary, where his wounds were pronounced serious. Lee Shelton is also known as 'Stagger' Lee.^[3]

Lyons eventually died of his injuries. Shelton was tried, convicted, and served prison time for this crime. This otherwise unmemorable crime is remembered in a song. In some older versions of the song, the name of the other party is given as "Billy Deslile" or "De Lion".

[edit] Stagger Lee as archetype

Immortalized in song, Stagger Lee has become an archetype, the embodiment of a tough-guy black man -- one who is sly, streetwise, cool, lawless, amoral, potentially violent, and who often defies white authority.^[4]

Author and music critic Greil Marcus explicitly ties the Stagger Lee archetype to Sly Stone and his album There's a Riot Goin' On in his book Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music.

[edit] The songs

"Stagger Lee" has been recorded hundreds of times. The Blues version recorded by Mississippi John Hurt in 1928 is considered by some commentators to be definitive, containing as it does all of the elements that appear in other versions. 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.^[5] In Clark's 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. Despite the changes, it was the original version of the song that reached #1 on Billboard's Hot 100 and was ranked #456 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

"Stag O Lee" songs may have predated even the 1895 incident, and Lee Shelton may have gotten his nickname from earlier folk songs. The first published version of the song was by folklorist John Lomax in 1910. The song was well known in African American communities along the lower Mississippi River by the 1910s.

Before World War II, it was almost always 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. 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 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".

Other well known artists who have recorded it include Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Taj Mahal, Ma Rainey, Professor Longhair, Sidney Bechet, New Monsoon, Johnny Dodds, Duke Ellington, Memphis Slim, Bill Haley & His Comets, Neil Diamond, Wilson Pickett, Ike and Tina Turner, Fats Domino, Doc Watson, Dr. John, Huey Lewis and the News, James Brown, The Isley Brothers, John Holt, Tom Rush, Travis MacRae, Tommy Roe, Modern Life is War, Dave Van Ronk and Ken Colyer. A version by The Fabulous Thunderbirds can be found on the Porky's Revenge soundtrack. Johnny Otis's band Snatch and the Poontangs perform a version in which the violence is matched by the sex.

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" [1] in revenge for Billy's death.

Elton John's 1976 "Blue Moves" album included the song "Shoulder Holster", about a vengeful woman out to kill her cheating ex. The song begins with the lyrics "It was just like Frankie and Johnny / And it was just like Stagger Lee".

The 1979 album London Calling by The Clash includes a ska version (a cover of a song by the Jamaican rocksteady group The Rulers) titled "Wrong 'Em Boyo", in which Stagger Lee is explicitly the hero and Billy the villain.^[6] Another variant by Austin blues artist Steve James retells the story from Stagger Lee's perspective, as the underprivileged child of a prostitute and a steamboat worker, and like the Clash's version, Billy is not innocent.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, by contrast, present an even more violent and homoerotic version of the song "Stagger Lee" on their 1996 album Murder Ballads. This version retakes a street "toast poem" on Stagolee ^[7]. 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. This is 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 Staggolee performed 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.

In 2007, Iowa hardcore band Modern Life Is War recorded the song "Stagger Lee" which was released on the album Midnight In America.

[edit] Contemporary interpretations and notable allusions

In the 1980s, pro wrestler Junkyard Dog used the name (and theme song) Stagger Lee to surprise his rival Ted DiBiase, returning from a "Loser Leaves Town" match under a mask during an infamous feud in Mid-South Wrestling.^[8]

Stagg R. Leigh is the assumed name under which Thelonious Ellison, the protagonist of Percival Everett's novel Erasure (2001) writes his parody of blaxploitation literature My Pafology (later changed to Fuck).^[9]

Contemporary band Clutch_(band) referenced Stagger Lee in the song "Tight Like That" on their 1995 self-titled album, in a line, "I hung a left down to Lemans' Avenue, Stagger Lees everywhere, trying to bring me doom, oh no!"

Contemporary artist Beck covered Mississippi John Hurt's interpretation, "Stagolee," on Hurt's tribute album "Avalon Blues," released by Vanguard Records in 2001.

Stagger Lee, a graphic novel both telling the history of the story and a fictionalized version of it with political themes, was published by Image Comics in May 2006, written by Derek McCulloch and drawn by Shepherd Hendrix (ISBN 1582406073). ^[10]

Josh Ritter references Stagger Lee in his song "Folk Bloodbath". (2008)

The main character of Jacqueline Woodson's young adult novel The House You Pass on the Way (1997) names herself Staggerlee after the song.

Jeremy Love and Patrick Morgan's online graphic novel Bayou (graphic novel) features a character named Stagolee who was shot by a man for sleeping with his wife and who later kicked the devil out of Hell before taking over.

[edit] See also

• Frankie and Johnny

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• The Myth and Song of Stagger Lee History of Lee Shelton and of the song. A list of over 400 recordings as of September, 2008.
• The Stagger Lee Files
• Comprehensive list of Stagger Lee recordings 229 recordings as of Sept. 24, 2007.
• Mississippi John Hurt's version
• website for Irish Stagger Lee
• Stackolee.net A private collection of around 270 versions (as of October, 2008).

Preceded by "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" by The Platters

Billboard Hot 100 number-one single (Lloyd Price version) February 9, 1959 - March 8, 1959 (4 weeks)

Succeeded by "Venus" by Frankie Avalon