1865 - 1895
1865, March 16. Lee Shelton is born.
1865. With $100, John B. Stetson rents a small room, buys tools and $10 worth of fur. The John B. Stetson Hat Company is born.
Late 1800s. A popular song of the south is "Bully of the Town." Ragtime emerges as a new musical style. St. Louis is the Ragtime hothouse.
Early 1890s. Madame Babe’s is a famous, classy St. Louis brothel. Madame Babe once refused to have Oscar Wilde in her house. Mama Lou, the house singer, is renown for belting out her version of “Bully of the Town.”
1894. On a train from Chicago to San Francisco, white sports writer, horse judge and amateur musician, Charles E. Trevathan, plays the song to amuse fellow passengers. Making no mention of St. Louis brothels, he claims to have learned the tune from Tennessee blacks. The passengers encourage him to put lyrics to it. He does.
1895, September 16. May Irwin, Trevathan’s girlfriend, sings his “The Bully Song” in the Broadway musical, “The Widow Jones.” Although it pre-dates Lee Shelton’s inclusion in the song and is arguably used in a non-pejorative sense, this is the only time a white person records the word “nigger” in the Stagger Lee bloodline.
Have you heard about that Bully that just come to town?
He’s down among the niggers, layin’ their bodies down.
I’m a-lookin’ for that bully and he must be found.
1895, 27 December. "Stag" Lee Shelton shoots William Lyons in the Bill Curtis Saloon, "the most extensive chance emporium in North St. Louis". There is a argument that culminated with Lyons snatching Shelton's Stetson hat. It is only 1 of 5 similar murders that day in St. Louis.
VOL 5—NO.213. ST. LOUIS. SATURDAY MORNING. DECEMBER 28,1895—FIVE CENTS
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 Sheldon, a carriage driver.
Lyons and Sheldon 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 Sheldon's hat from his head. The latter indignantly demanded its return. Lyons refused, and Sheldon withdrew his revolver and shot Lyons in the abdomen. When his victim fell to the floor Sheldon 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 Sheldon is also known as 'Stag' Lee.
1896 - 1900
1895, December. White lawyer Nathaniel Dryden defends Shelton. Dryden was the first lawyer in the state of Missouri to gain conviction of a white man for the murder of a black man. 300 angry black people hiss and curse Shelton and Dryden as they enter the courthouse.
1896. Election year in what will be considered by historians to be one of the most dramatic campaigns in American history. St. Louis is the 4th largest city in the country. Both political parties are seeking the black vote. William Lyons was an organizer for the Republicans. Lee Shelton was an organizer for the Democrats. The black vote had gone to the Republicans since the end of the Civil War but times are changing.
1896, January 3. Lee Shelton held on a $4,000 bond – equivalent to $100,000 today.
1896, February 12. Grand Jury indicts Lee Shelton on a charge of first-degree murder.
1896, June 25. Lee Shelton is released on a $3,000 bond paid by pawnbroker, Morris H. Smit. Does the money come from political connections?
1896, July 15. Lee Shelton's trial starts. Dryden argues self-defense.
1896, July 18. The jury is unable to agree on a verdict. Seven vote for murder in the second degree, two for manslaughter, and three for acquittal.
1897 – 1918. Ragtime’s period of peak popularity.
1897, August 21. The earliest known reference to the song appears in the Kansas City Leavenworth Herald.
It is understood that Prof. Charlie Lee, the piano thumper, will play 'Stack-a-Lee' in variations at the K. C. Negro Press association.
1897, August 26. Nathaniel Dryden, a morphine addict, dies after a drinking binge.
1897, October 7. The second trial takes place in the court of Judge James E. Withrow. The jury takes two hours to return a guilty verdict. Shelton begins a 25 year sentence in the Jefferson penitentiary.
1900 - 1910
1903. Earliest known transcription of lyrics from Memphis but reportedly first heard in Colorado in 1899 or 1900.
1903. Another transcription of lyrics to the Ballad of Stackerlee. Sung from the perspective of a St. Louis prostitute working for him as her pimp.
The song spreads like a game of Chinese Whispers across the South as musicians hear it and play it back from memory with their own embellishments. The Stag Lee of the song is hung for the murder, sent off with an elaborate funeral, kicks the Devil from his throne and takes over Hell.
Democrat 1905–09
1909, Thanksgiving. Lee Shelton released from prison, pardoned by governor Joseph Wingate Folk.
1910, February. Miss Ella Fisher of Texas sends John Lomax, a pioneering musicologist and folklorist, 8 stanzas of The Ballad of Stagalee. She writes to him, “This song is sung by the Negroes on the levee while they are loading and unloading the river freighters.”
1910 - 1920
1911. Howard Odum describes the song as being widely sung in several southern states and also remarks that it is "sung by Negro vagrants all over the country." The first published versions of the lyrics appear in The Journal of American Folklore.
1911, January 26. Shelton pistol whips and kills William Atkins while robbing his house.
1911, May 7. Shelton enters prison once more.
1912, February 8. Governor Herbert Spencer Hadley (Republican 1909–13) pardons Sheton under pressure from the Democrats.
1912, March 11. Lee Shelton dies of tuberculosis without having left the prison hospital. No notice of his death appears in St. Louis newspapers.
1920 - 1930
1923. The first two recordings of the song. Frank Westphal & His Regal Novelty Orchestra record it as a jazz instrumental on the 18th of October in Chicago.
1924. First recording with lyrics by black artist, Lovie Austin "Skeeg-a-Lee Blues."
1925. Ma Rainey & her Georgia Band (including Louis Armstrong on Cornet).
1926. First Hawaiian version by Sol Ho’opi’i. Hawaiian versions are uniformly instrumental.
1927. The recording by Long Cleeve Reed & Little Harvey Hull of "Original Stack O’Lee Blues" will go on to become the 5th most valuable record to collectors. There is only one known copy in existence. The owner, Joe Bussard, was offered $30,000 and he laughed it off with no intention of ever selling. He wants to be buried with it.
Stag Lee was a bully, he bullied all his life.
Well he bulled to Chicago town with a ten cent pocket knife.
1927. Duke Ellington records "Stack O’Lee Blues. He and his band became a permanent fixture at the Cotton Club and made weekly broadcasts from there on radio station WHN. We don’t yet know if "Stack O’Lee Blues" was included in a broadcast.
1927. Bob Dylan would cover in 1993.
1928. Beck covers this version in 2001. Rumor has it that there were verses Hurt regularly sang but did not record as they were "unsuitable" for general release. In ’63, after Hurt’s rediscovery, he adds a lengthy introduction describing a robbery by Stagolee and Jesse James of a card game in a coal mine. He insists that Stagolee was a white man.
Gambling's good when you're winning. Gambling's bad when you lose. But a new gambling story is always good to hear. In "Billy Lyons and Stack O'Lee" Furry Lewis, popular Vocalion blues star, tells us a story of two gamblers you won't want to miss. On the other side, he sings and plays "Good Lookin' Girl Blues," a mighty good number, too. Be sure to listen to this record today!
"Billy Lyons and Stack O'Lee" by Furry Lewis as advertised in The Chicago Defender April 21, 1928.
1930 - 1950
1931. Cab Calloway records "Stack O’Lee Blues." He has been playing at the Cotton Club for a year and is broadcasting NBC radio shows from there twice weekly. We do know yet if "Stack O’Lee Blues" is included in one of the broadcasts. Cab Calloway and his Cotton Club Orchestra are the first African American Jazz Orchestra to tour the south.
1931. Woody Guthrie records two versions, "Stagger Lee" and "Stack-O-Lee." He sings versions of the song for decades.
John Hurt sang:
Standin’ on the gallows,
Head way up high
At 12 o’clock they killed him,
They was all glad to see him die
That bad man, Oh cruel Stack O’Lee.
Woody Guthrie sings:
Stackolee on his gallows,
His head way up high
12 o’clock we killed him,
We was all glad to see him die
He was a bad man, That mean old Stackolee.
Black singers commonly sing variations on "They was all glad to see him die." White singers commonly sing variations on "We was all glad to see him die." There are continual subtle variations between black and white performances of this song.
1933+ Field recordings of the song are made for the Library of Congress as various collectors such as John and Alan Lomax tour the country recording folk music.
1950 - 1960
1950. Archibald (Leon T Gross) records the epic "Stack-A-Lee, Parts 1 & 2" and has the first mainstream hit. This is the version that Lloyd Price hears while serving in Korea.
1955. Poet Margaret Walker records a spoken word version, "Stackalee" released on, "An Anthology of Negro Poets."
1958. The song explodes in popularity when Lloyd Price includes it as the B side to his single "You Need Love." DJs prefer to play "Stagger Lee." Sales peak at nearly 200,000 copies a day and the song shoots to #1 on the charts. Dick Clark thinks the song too violent for the American Bandstand audience. Price delivers a clean version with a happy ending. The first #1 hit to be censored. Lloyd Price is still performing. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998.
1959, February 14, 21 & 28. Lloyd Price's "Stagger Lee" is #1 on the charts.
1959. The Collins Kids on Town Hall Party.
1960 - 1970
1960. Pat Boone covers Lloyd Price’s version but changes the chorus from "Go, Stagger Lee! Go!" to "Oh, Stagger Lee! Oh!" Pat, apparently, is not comfortable cheering on the badass black man.
1963. The Isley Brothers record it with a young Jimi Hendrix on guitar. They sing the song on live TV in the UK and create a scandal when Ron pulls a gun from his coat and mimes the shooting.
1963. A folk musicologist, Tom Hoskins, rediscovers John Hurt near Avalon, Mississippi. Hurt now begins introducing the song with a story about Stack O’Lee and Jesse James robbing a card game in a coal mine. Hoskins interviewed Hurt extensively. Hurt speaks at length about Stack O’Lee and insists he was a white man. Hurt dies in ’66.
1963. The Ventures record their instrumental Surf guitar version.
1965. Ike and Tina Turner rewrite the story as a brawl in a modern-day Go-Go bar.
1966. The Clash will cover.
1967. James Brown.
Late 60s. Bobby Seale, co-founder of the Black Panthers, identifies himself and other black leaders as Stagger Lee characters. Seale names a son after Stagger Lee.
1970 - 1980
1970. Elvis Presley sings the song during rehearsal (caught on the "That's The Way It Is" documentary). It's officially unreleased and available only as a bootleg. He changes lyrics but clearly knows the story well. Billy’s "three little children and a very sickly wife" become "three hundred little children and a very horny wife."
1978. The Grateful Dead rewrite it with a modern perspective and include it on their "Shakedown Street" album. Members of the band still perform it live.
1979. The Rulers version while the band is in Jamaica. At his suggestion they do it as "Wrong ‘em Boyo" on the London Calling album.
1979. Neil Diamond records a disco-influenced version.
1980 - 1990
1981. Ladies and Gentlemen, Tom Jones.
1983. James Baldwin publishes "Staggerlee Wonders" in his volume of poetry, "Jimmy’s Blues."
1986.Samuel Jackson in "Black Snake Moan." Burnside later heavily reworks the song as "Criminal Inside Me" which he records in '96 with the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.
1990 - 2000
1992. Bob Brozman records "Stack O Lee Aloha" going back to the early Hawaiian versions.
1992. While still a Rolling Stone, Bill Wyman forms a side project, Bill Wyman and the Bootleg Kings and Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings. Stagger Lee is a staple for them all. Wyman also includes Pine Top Smith’s "Stack O'Lee Blues" on the Bill Wyman Blues Odyssey documentary/book/soundtrack.
1993. Frank Hutchison’s version. Dylan writes of the song: "truth is shadowy. in the pre-postindustrial age, victims of violence were allowed (in fact it was their duty) to be judges over their offenders -- parents were punished for their children's crimes (we've come a long way since then) the song says that a man's hat is his crown."
1994. Huey Lewis & the News.
1996. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds interpreted Stagger Lee on their 1996 album Murder Ballads. The song has been a mainstay of their live set ever since. Nick found the lyrics in a collection of folk poetry gathered in New York prisons in the 50s and 60s. "The gods gave us this song and they were pissing themselves with laughter when they did it."
2000 ->
2001. Beck releases his faithful version of Mississippi John Hurt's "Stagolee." Beck recorded it in 1994 in Sun Studios. He has an even deeper connection to the song. He says that his 1996 hit "Devil’s Haircut" was a rewrite of the Stagger Lee myth."I imagined Stagger Lee… I thought, what if this guy showed up now in 1996. The song had this Sixties grooviness, and I thought of using him as a Rumplestiltskin figure, this Lazarus figure to comment on where we've ended up as people."
2004. The Black Keys reimagine it once again as "Stack Shot Billy." Guitarist Dan Auerbach says, "I had Mississippi John Hurt's version and a bunch of other people's versions, and I thought, 'These guys all wrote their own versions of this song; why couldn't I do my own version?'"
2006. The story is published as an award-winning graphic novel.
2007. Modern Life is War record a heavy metal first person version of the story.
2007. Samuel L. Jackson (backed by R.L. Burnside’s grandson and "adopted" son) sings "Stagger Lee" in the film "Black Snake Moan."
2007. Keb’ Mo’s version is included on the soundtrack to John Sayles’ film "Honeydripper."
2008. Benny Profane liberally reinterprets the song as a pornographic film "Bullets and Burlesque: The Deviant Life of Stagger Lee." "It's based on the true story of 'Stagger' Lee Sheldon, the man who inspired countless folk tales, blues songs, etc. It's set in 1895 and has a really surreal look, kind of a mix between 19th century burlesque and 20th century punk rock decay."
Singers and bands, both big and small, continue to record and perform variations of this song. Our list of artists who have recorded this song is over 400 names long. Not including multiple versions by the same artist, in the 85 years since the first recording that’s an average of 1 new recording every 10 weeks.