The Legend of Stagger Lee
The Enduring Legacy of a Christmas Eve Murder
There's a movie in theaters directed by Cord Jefferson called American Fiction, based on the 2001 novel Erasure by Percival Everett. In the film, there's a reference to an old song, “Stagger Lee,” that I recognized. The main character uses the name Stagg R. Leigh as a pseudonym for a book he authors. I wanted to know a more about the name.
“Stagger Lee” is a folk song that predates the 1958 version by Lloyd Price by half a century. When Lloyd Price popularized it, the song had been around for over sixty years. The first mention was a song called "Stack-a-Lee," in the Kansas City Leavenworth Herald in 1897, performed by "Prof. Charlie Lee, the piano thumper."
The song by Lloyd Price is upbeat and energetic, and I've never really stopped to listen to what is being said. Neither has my mom, apparently, because when I asked her if she knew what it was about, she couldn't recall. She was shocked to hear it was about a murder, a real-life Christmas Eve murder.
I told her to play it and listen to the lyrics; it tells the story.
Lloyd Price and Don Costa Orchestra (1958), Digitized 78rpm (Internet Archive)
The real-life Stagger Lee was Lee Shelton, an African-American carriage driver from St. Louis, Missouri. The origin of the nickname Stag Lee or Stack Lee has many explanations but commonly noted that he was known as the captain of a black social club called Four Hundred Club and a member of a group of pimps known as the Macks, who had a reputation for dressing flashy and commanding attention.
On Christmas Eve in 1895, Lee Shelton drank at the Bill Curtis Saloon. Lee encountered William "Billy" Lyons at a St. Louis saloon. They argued, and Lyons took Stack Lee's Stetson hat. Lee shot Lyons, took back his hat, and left. The injuries led to Lyon's death, and Lee was charged, tried, and convicted of the murder in 1897.
The story of Lee's crime soon became the subject of song and part of folklore and mythic tales.
Early versions were called "Stack-a-Lee" and "Stacker Lee," while "Stagolee" and "Stagger Lee" also became common. Other recorded variants include "Stackerlee," "Stack O'Lee," "Stackolee," "Stackalee," "Stagerlee," and "Stagalee."
The earliest versions were likely part of the work songs sung by African Americans during forced labor to distract themselves from their work. By 1910, it was well known along the Mississippi River. That year, a partial transcription of it was received by musicologist John Lomax. Two versions were published in the Journal of American Folklore in 1911 by sociologist and historian Howard W. Odum.
The song was first recorded a century ago, in 1923, as "Stack-O'Lee Blues" by Fred Waring's Pennsylvanian in Camden, New Jersey.
Pre-war versions were recorded by Duke Ellington (1927), Cab Calloway (1931), Woody Guthrie (1941), and Sidney Bechet (1945).
In folk tradition, artists have taken liberties with the details of the murder and actions of Stagger Lee. He's a character used as an archetype to depict any number of crimes, including a bank robber in the version first recorded by Mississippi John Hurt in 1928.
Stagger Lee's story has inspired two novels, a graphic novel, a musical, a pornographic film, over 400 songs in a variety of genres, and the pen-name of a character in a book-turned-film.
American Fiction (2023) is about a frustrated novelist fed up with the establishment that profits from Black entertainment that relies on tired and offensive tropes. To prove his point, he uses a pen name to write an outlandish Black book of his own that puts him in the middle of the hypocrisy and the madness he claims to reject.