"Stagger Lee", also known as "Stagolee", "Stackerlee", "Stack O'Lee", "Stack-a-Lee" and several other variants, is a popular blues folk song based on the murder of William "Billy" Lyons by Stagger Lee Shelton. The 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.[citation needed]
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.[1] In this 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. However, it was the original, unbowdlerized, version of Lloyd's performance 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.
Contents |
"Stag O Lee" songs may have predated even the 1895 incident[citation needed], 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.[2] The song was well known in African American communities along the lower Mississippi River by the 1910s[citation needed].
Before World War II, it was almost always known as "Stack O'Lee"[citation needed]. 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[citation needed]. 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".
|
Preceded by "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" by The Platters |
Billboard Hot 100 number-one single (Lloyd Price version) February 9, 1959 - March 2, 1959 (4 weeks) |
Succeeded by "Venus" by Frankie Avalon |
Preceded by "Try Me" by James Brown & The Famous Flames |
Billboard Hot R&B Sides number-one single February 9, 1959 - March 2, 1959 (four weeks) |
Succeeded by "It's Just a Matter of Time" by Brook Benton |
|