Stagger Lee


Cortez Franklin & Lennie Pogan

Stagolee

The Long Road to Freedom: Anthology of Black Music. — 1971

Cortez Franklin & Lennie Pogan
Cortez Franklin & Lennie Pogan

CD4: Ballads and Frolics/Bad Men, Booze and Minstrels

Cortez Franklin and Lennie Pogan collaborated on a rendition of "Stagolee," featured on the album The Long Road to Freedom: An Anthology of Black Music. This anthology, produced by Harry Belafonte, spans a wide range of African American musical traditions, aiming to preserve and celebrate the rich cultural heritage of Black music.

Their version of "Stagolee" is a 5-minute and 42-second track that blends elements of ballad and blues, characterized by syncopated patterns.

The title The Long Road to Freedom describes both the journey of the African Americans whose music Harry Belafonte engages in this collection and the path of the project itself. Conceived in the late 1950s, The Long Road to Freedom includes representations of African American musical traditions from their roots in West African societies through the work songs sung by prisoners on chain gangs in the wake of the Civil War and on into the 1960s. The recording process for this monumental project—originally five records and an accompanying book—spanned the decade between 1961 and ‘71. If that were not enough, the corporate alliance that initially supported the project had broken up by the time the recordings were completed and, as he tells it, Belafonte chose to shelve the project indefinitely rather than revamp its scope for distribution as a smaller product. Nearly thirty years passed before it was taken up again when an executive at Buddha Records searched the archives catalogue and retrieved a record for a project called “Anthology of Negro Folk Music.”
-- Review Essay | The Long Road to Freedom: Anthology of Black Music.