That Cruel Stagger Lee

I woke up this morning with Stagger Lee in my head. I took it as a bad omen. A death sign. What else could it be? Stagger Lee, the quintessential bad motherfucker. The alpha and omega crazy nigger. Stack killed Billy Lyons, or Billy DeLions, or maybe Billy the Lion over a card game or maybe over a $5 Stetson hat. Billy pleaded for his life. Said he had two, maybe three children, and a sickly wife (or maybe sexy wife he was offering Stack). But Stack had ice in his veins. Shot poor Billy dead with a smokeless .44, or maybe, as Joe Strummer eventually had it, Stack left a knife in Billy's back.

Mostly Stack went unpunished. Sometimes he was hung unrepentant. And in one memorable version—recorded as a two-sided 78 by the New Orleans pianist Archibald—Stack wound up down in Hell where he stared down Ol' Satan himself.

As I lay on my pillow in the dreary gray dawn the version of Stagger Lee that ran through my head was the one recorded in 1928 by Mississippi John Hurt. Like every version I've ever heard or read, it's definitive.

Hurt was a sui generis stylist from the Arthurian-named Avalon, Mississippi. A fingerpicking guitarist and singer with a style so close and tight and soft and intimate you could call it downright insular. Not the stuff likely to get over unamplified at barn dances and chicken shack throwdowns. Hurt was a man born in the 19^th century. A man more tied more to the rag guitar style of protean geniuses like Blind Blake than he was to his nearby contemporaries like Tommy Johnson, Charley Patton, and Son House. In 1928 he was already a man out of time. Hurt made a baker's dozen of recordings for the Okeh label in 1928—the grand era of folk pillaging and song-catching glorified by the Coen Brothers' Soggy Bottom Boys—and then went back to life as a farm hand until the folk revival of the early 1960s lifted him, then in his 70s, up out of a life of obscurity and toil.

Hurt recorded some of the most indelible performances of the folk/blues tradition. His “Candy Man” is THE double-entendre song of all time. His picking and singing echoes directly down to Elvis and Scotty Moore at Sun Records in 1954. And his version of the great Frankie and Albert love/murder ballad is the one that is best remembered and most defining. But his Stagger Lee—one of the earliest musical versions of the tale ever recorded—is his best record.

Hurt's Stagger Lee is a cruel man who kills poor Billy in a dispute over a $5 Stetson hat and goes to his death on the gallows with out remorse or comment. It's a cautionary tale. Not moralistic exactly. But not the amoral tale that Stack's story would become elsewhere. But then, Hurt was apparently as soft-spoken, simple, God-fearing man.

I admit to being fascinating, if not obsessed, with Stagger Lee since I first heard Lloyd Price's mid-1950s hit version of the tale/song as a wee teenager. But some folks have made a career of hunting down the history and origins of this crucial character and the mythological stuff that has grown up around him. Greil Marcus, in his most brilliant book Mystery Train, includes a great exposition of Stagger Lee in the appendix to his chapter on Sly Stone. Last year Berkley visiting professor Cecil Brown wrote the definitive text (at least to date), Stagolee Shot Billy, about the historic origins (in a St. Louis murder case) and social and cultural implications of Stack O' Lee (as he's sometimes been known). On his website Thomas L. Morgan lists more than 200 recorded musical versions of the tale, and Brown chronicles printed versions that precede the musical recordings.

Comments

[jackson]

Thanks both for mentioning Joe Strummer, and not mentioning Jerry Garcia. Keep up the 'Music 101' blogs, you can call me edjumacated!

[chervokas]

Funny about those two---strummer and garcia---I saw them live w/in a week of each other at Red Rock in Boulder in 1981. I was at The Naropa Institute for Disembodied Poetics run by Allen Ginsburg for a conference on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the publication of On the Road. Lot of great stories to tell about that one. Lived down the hall at a U Colorado dorm from Wm Burroughs. For another time.

Anyway, the Dead had partially financed the conference and were playing a week at nearby at Red Rocks at the same time so the conference was crawling w/ Deadheads of a type I had never seen before. (Told me about acid that they like to take two hits, then three hits, then two so that they are peaking throughout the entire show...also, on the way up to the Dead show told me I shouldn't eat the 7-11 chilli cheese burger I had purchased and which was now turning into a puddle of hot waxy color in my lap..."bad chemicals, man....you shouldn't mix that shit w/ acid" !)

Anyway, it was right around the time that Ginsburg had recorded w/ the Clash for Ghetto Defendant. One week it was the Dead at Red Rocks w/ tornados behind the mountains in the flats after a storm. The next week it was the Clash at Red Rocks w/ Ginsburg (who tried to pick up my buddy in the bathroom that week) doing ghetto defendant w/ the clash at red rock. Quite a lot of fun that week was. And I learned a lot about writing too from Gregory Corso and Ted Berrigan while I was at it!

Oh well, those were the days.

[Tony Alva]

Great post Jason... A good friend of mine turned me onto MJH many years ago and we even recorded a very inept cover of Sliding Delta in our old eight track studio. I recently picked up the tribute record to MJH compiled by Peter Case a very astute student I must say. Great record if you're game. This link will take you to Pete's web store http://www.younghunter.com/pcstore.html The reocrd is called Avalon Blues. Most awesome!

[chervokas]

Tony, I'll check it out. It's funny, Hurt was a man out of time in both directions---playing in a rag/folk style that was probably already old fashioned in MS in 1928, and playing in a quiet, close style that wouldn't become the norm until the ascendence of Bing Crosby and close miking.

[Michael M.]

I blogged about John Hurt just a few days after your post. I just found your post now in February, though. I agree with you. With personal ties to Saint Louis and Mississippi, John Hurt's versions of "Stacker Lee" and "Frankie and Albert" move me that much more. I will have to check out Mystery Train. I want to know the story behind "Louis Collins." So far, it appears that Hurt composed the song himself about an incident lost to history.

[Jim Hauser]

Here's a link to a great interview of Mississippi John Hurt by Tom Hoskins--the man who rediscovered Hurt in Avalon, Mississippi years after he made his original recordings "Stack O'Lee Blues", "Candy Man", etc.
http://guitarvideos.com/interviews/hurt/core.htm

I've been researching the legend of Stack O'Lee for several years now, and have created a website related to it titled the Stagger Lee Files. Below is a link to it.
http://www.geocities.com/blueskat2000/stagger_lee_home.htm

[chervokas]

Jim, Thanks for the heads up, I'll check out the Hurt interview. I've seen your Stagger Lee site, btw. Nice stuff. You might be interested in the episode of my podcast, Down in the Flood, devoted to Stagger Lee & John Henry. You can pop over to the website at http://www.highwatereverywhere.com and direct download that episode.

[Stagger_Lee]

It's lame of me to comment on a two-year-old post, I know, but I just came across it...

I wrote a graphic novel on this very subject, and given your banner logo, I thought that might appeal to you. Check our Library Journal review here:

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6373003.html

[chervokas]

Derek-

Tremendous! I'd love to see a copy. Check out a podcast I did on the same subject awhile back.

http://www.highwatereverywhere.com/2005/07/episode_6_john_.html

[Stagger_Lee]

Hey, sorry I didn't see this earlier. Send me an email (badmanstaggerlee@sbcglobal.net) and I'll see if I can't hook you up with a review copy.

[chervokas]

Derek, I'd love it if you could get me a review copy. Thanks. I'll email you.