The many faces of Stagger Lee
May 2nd, 2011
By:
A hat is thieved. A man pleads for his life. A bullet is fired. The damage done. It was the bad man. Mean old Stagger Lee.
“The history of the song tells many stories. It is an anthem of the dispossessed. 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.” -staggerlee.com
These are the few facts most musical storytellers can agree on. After that, the story of Stagger Lee is filled with bravado myth, psychosocial hearsay and the occasional devil gets his due redemption. Stagger Lee shot billy over his stolen 5$ hat. But exactly what happened to Stagger Lee, and why did he shoot billy?
Here is a short breakdown of who Stagger Lee actually was, complete with probabilities of likelihood.
Stagger Lee shot and killed Billy Lions in a saloon FACT. According to the St Louis Globe-Democrat in 1895, Billy William Lions was one of five people murdered in St. Louis on that day (remember St. Louis was the 5th biggest city at that time and filled with folks heading west to settle). Quite lawless at the time, St. Louis was teeming with immigrant gangs from southern and eastern Europe.
Billy stole Stagger Lee’s hat MAYBE FACT. According to some who sing about Staggalee, the two men were engaged in a little gambling the night of the murder. It is widely thought, and popularized by Loyd Price, that Billy won Mr. Lee’s hat fair and square:
Stagger Lee was convicted and sentenced to hang.FICTION. Although Mississippi John Hurt’s famous recounting of Stagger Lee culminates with his hanging, it is noted that history was slightly kinder. It took two trials to deliver a guilty verdict, and after 13 years in jail, Stagger Lee was pardoned by the Governor of Missouri and let free.
Stagger Lee was a bad man FACT. After a pardon from the governor, Stagger Lee roamed free for two years, only to be jaild again for pistol whipping a home intruder to death. Jailed again, he died in a prison hospital two years later from TB.
Some renditions claim that when Stagger Lee died, he kicked the devil off his throne, thereby taking his place. It seems slightly presumptuous to claim that the bad Stagger Lee was bad enough to dethrone Beelzebub himself, but you know what happens when folktales start to get passed around.
The first time I heard the story of Stagger Lee was this bluesy rendition by Taj Mahal. In his version, Staggalee’s bullet traveled through Billy’s body and broke the Lion Club bartender’s looking glass. That may be FACT, but without reading the police report, I’d be hard pressed to say if any of these ancillary details were true or just included in the song because ‘blood’ and ‘club’ rhyme (somewhat).
The Black Keys have one of my favorite and most accurate versions. Stack shot Billy/Billy laid down and died. Yeah, I think we can all agree on that FACT.
Stagger Lee would crawl over 50 good [lady parts] to get to one fat boys [rump].Likely FICTION. Although purely speculative, it cannot be expected that such hypothetical notion would hold water, as Nick Cave’s loose adaptation of Mr. Lee comes from African hustler’s folklore. Only a rough and tumble artist like Mr. Cave would suggest that Mr. Lee would be not only a murderer, but also a pedophile. I have to admit, I do like this black and white music video-it reminds me of something I might have made in film school (and been very proud of).
A hundred and sixteen years later, what can we make of this infamous murder? A folk tale, after all, is really only as strong or vivid as the folklorist passing the story on. The process; passing from mouth to ear and generation to generation, reminds me of the children’s game Telephone, where one person starts by whispering a secret into another kids ear. That kid, in turn, tells the next kid exactly what he heard, except ‘fun’ turns to ‘gun’ and ‘cried’ turns to ‘died.’ By the time the story fully told, no one really knows what happened.
Let me know what you think in the comments, including your favorite Stagg-o-lee version of the song. For more information, the folks at www.staggerlee.com have done a great job with all things related.
One Response to “The many faces of Stagger Lee”
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Good stuff- like a musical Mythbusters!