Murder to Myth
The Remarkable History of Stagger Lee
Over 500 artists have recorded this song since the first recording in 1923.
The song has lived as Ragtime, a Broadway showtune, Blues, Jazz, Honky Tonk, Country, 50s Rock and Roll, Ska, Folk, Surf, 70s punk, Heavy Metal, Reggae, 90s punk, Rap. Even Hawaiian. Listen to it and we hear the evolution of modern music.
It is international. Artists from France, Italy, Jamaica, England, Argentina, Scotland, Germany and Sweden have done versions. And Australians Johnny O’Keefe, Magic Dirt, Col Joye, Jeff Lang, Ed Kuepper and Jimmy Barnes who calls it one of his favourite songs.
This song is not merely covered with each new recording. It is rewritten and reimagined. While many versions of the song are recognizable covers from previous artists, the diversity of original versions is astounding. A playlist of 50 or more disparate versions can be heard without ever feeling like one is hearing the same song twice. Country Blues, Hawaiian, Jazz and Surf Guitar versions have been recorded as instrumentals.
Margaret Walker and James Baldwin wrote poems from the song. Bobby Seale, a founder of the Black Panthers, named a son Stagolee. It’s been refashioned as a musical, two novels, a short story, an award-winning graphic novel, Ph.D. dissertations, an apple cider, a restaurant and, in 2008, a pornographic feature film.
On Christmas Eve, 1895, in a St. Louis saloon, "Stag" Lee Shelton, a black pimp, shot William "Billy" Lyons. Almost immediately the events were folded into a pre-existing song, "Bully of the Town."
Stagolee was a bully man, an’ ev’y body knowed, When dey seed Stagolee comin’, to give Stagolee de road
Like a game of Chinese Whispers it swept through the South, following railway lines and paddle steamers of the Mississippi. Told and retold. Sung and resung. Changing a little bit each time. Reality slipped away and the myth was created.
The earliest known transcription of lyrics are from Memphis in 1903 but reportedly first heard in Colorado in 1899 or 1900. The Stag Lee of the song is hung for the murder, is sent off with an elaborate funeral, kicks the Devil from his throne and takes over Hell. The real Lee Shelton died of tuberculosis in prison in 1912.
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. No other song has so transcended its humble beginnings and been re-invented in so many genres, in so many media and by so many artists.
Over a quarter of the recordings of this song have been made since 2000. It is becoming more popular and more widely known than ever.
Stack’s old girl Nellie said, ‘I’ve had men
From Maine to Tennessee
But I never had a man to grind me and make me like it
Like old Stackerlee, that hip-shakin’ back-breakin’
Sweet fuckin’ papa
Stackerlee.’
- 1903 lyrics