{"id":840,"date":"2000-08-22T23:07:01","date_gmt":"2000-08-22T23:07:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/?p=840"},"modified":"2014-08-22T23:28:23","modified_gmt":"2014-08-22T23:28:23","slug":"840","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/840\/","title":{"rendered":"The Legacy of Stagger Lee"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anyone who\u2019s ever listened to an oldies radio has probably heard the story of Stagger Lee<\/a>, as performed by Lloyd Price<\/a>. In the song, Stagger Lee loses his money and \u201cbrand new Stetson hat\u201d in a dice game with a man named Billy. He then proceeds to kill Billy, despite the latter\u2019s begging and pleading. What most casual music fans don\u2019t realize is that Price\u2019s song is not the first or last musical version of Stagger Lee\u2019s tale.<\/p>\n

\"StagoleeShotBilly\"<\/a>The events portrayed in Price\u2019s song are based on an actual murder<\/a> reported in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat in December 1895. According to the article, \u201cStag\u201d Lee Shelton murdered William Lyons after Lyons stole Shelton\u2019s hat during a political argument. However, it is likely that Stagger Lee existed as a figure of African-American folklore before St. Louis event. A Mississippi bluesman named Charles Hatler claims that he wrote the first Stagger Lee song in 1895, and not all songs and stories about Stagger Lee mention the murder of Lyons. This has led some experts to propose that Shelton gave himself the nickname \u201cStag\u201d to associate himself with the Stagger Lee of folklore.<\/p>\n

The Stagger Lee of early blues songs was an anti-heroic \u201cbadman\u201d figure who sold his soul to the Devil in return for a magical Stetson hat that made him invulnerable. Because he could not be killed, Stagger Lee was free to take whatever he wanted, usually from his peers in the black community. Despite his evil ways, Stagger Lee was respected in the black community because even the (white) authorities were afraid to tangle with him.<\/p>\n

During the civil rights era, Stagger Lee became a role model for black men. Bobby Seale<\/a>, for example, once identified himself and other civil rights leaders (including Malcolm X, Huey Newton, and Eldridge Cleaver) as \u201cStagger Lee\u201d figures. James P. Hauser<\/a> traces this evolution from \u201cbadman\u201d to civil rights hero directly to Price\u2019s version of the song. Though Price\u2019s \u201cStagger Lee\u201d is based on an earlier song by Leon T. \u201cArchibald\u201d Gross, Hauser describes how subtle changes in the song altered the character. The most important of these changes is the line \u201cStagger Lee threw 7, Billy swore that he threw 8.\u201d This single addition transforms Stagger Lee from a sore loser who murders his opponent to a wronged man who gets revenge after being cheated. Starting with the Price version of the song, Billy Lyons\u2014a black man in the early versions\u2014came to be identified as a white man, and therefore an oppressor of blacks.<\/p>\n

Stagger Lee has appeared in songs by over 200 artists<\/a>, from Bob Dylan<\/a> to The Clash<\/a>. While many artists simply cover the Price version of the song, the majority create original versions, often with new themes and political subtext. For example, The Grateful Dead<\/a> put a feminist spin on the story by having Billy Lyon\u2019s wife take her revenge on Stagger Lee. The sheer number and range of artists who have chosen to record Stagger Lee songs makes it unlikely that the legend will fade any time soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anyone who\u2019s ever listened to an oldies radio has probably heard the story of Stagger Lee, as performed by Lloyd Price. In the song, Stagger Lee loses his money and \u201cbrand new Stetson hat\u201d in a dice game with a man named Billy. He then proceeds to kill Billy, despite the latter\u2019s begging and pleading. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":841,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,20],"tags":[25,32,31],"class_list":["post-840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop-culture","category-weird-stuff","tag-folklore","tag-history","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=840"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":843,"href":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840\/revisions\/843"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}