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Summary
Summary
Although his story has been told countless times - by performers from Ma Rainey, Cab Calloway and the Isley brothers to Ike and Tina Turner, James Brown and Taj Mahal - no one seems to know who Stagolee really is. Stack Lee? Stagger Lee? He has gone by all these names in the ballad that has kept his exploits before us for over a century. Delving into a subculture of St. Louis known as Deep Morgan, Cecil Brown emerges with the facts behind the legend to unfold the mystery of Stack Lee and the incident that led to murder in 1895.
Author Notes
Cecil Brown is a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley.
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In "Stagolee," one of history's best-known blues songs, a dispute between Billy Lyons and a "bad man" called Stagolee ends in a shooting; variations of the ballad have been recorded by hundreds of musicians, from Mississippi John Hurt and Champion Jack Dupree to Peggy Lee, Ike and Tina Turner, Bob Dylan and Nick Cave. But for all the song's incarnations, little is known definitively about its origins: Who was Stagolee-or Stacker Lee, or Stack-o-lee? Scholar and author Brown (The Life and Loves of Mr. Jiveass Nigger) sets out to answer that question by presenting Lee Shelton, a.k.a. "Stack Lee," a pimp who shot Billy Lyons in a barroom in 1895; probing the seamy St. Louis milieu that served as the murder's backdrop; and tracing the song's history through the decades-from the eight stanzas sent to music archivist John Lomax in 1910, through 1920s white "hillbilly" versions and 1940s prison renditions and up to its influence on present-day rap music. Yet the book is more than a musical history; it considers "Stagolee as a black oral narrative and the rich relationship it reveals between oral literature and social life." Brown addresses the legend's place in an evolving African-American consciousness and draws upon the works of luminaries like Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison (he skillfully employs Freud, Levi-Strauss and Walter Benjamin as well). Brown's tone at times becomes dry and academic, and his occasional generalizations are jarring in such an otherwise thoughtful work. The book is intelligent and illuminating-and a smattering of illustrations livens it up-but it will likely be of more interest to serious musicologists and historians than casual blues fans. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Library Journal Review
Novelist and professor Brown (African American studies, Berkeley; The Life and Loves of Mr. Jiveass Nigger) delves into the historical and social underpinnings of the Stagolee myth, which has inspired numerous songs and shaped American culture. Tracing the source of the legend, he describes in detail the shooting and killing of bully Billy Lyons by flashy pimp Lee Shelton (a.k.a. Stagolee) for snatching his hat in a St. Louis bar in December 1895 and Shelton's subsequent trial and imprisonment. He links the incident to the swirl of corrupt St. Louis politics embodied in violent and warring black social clubs that controlled bootlegging, gambling, and a flourishing prostitution trade. Brown continues with the evolution and transmission of the Stagolee tale through the oral African American tradition and ragtime, blues, and rock'n'roll, showing the transformation of the myth to suit the purposes and social settings of the narrators. In a final section, the author explores the persistence of the Stagolee persona in American literature, 1960s radical black politics, and rap music. Thoroughly researched, fast moving, and well written, this is the first book to unearth the basis of the Stagolee legend (others mostly deal with its social implications) and will appeal to those interested in understanding American cultural history.-Dave Szatmary, Univ. of Washington, Seattle (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Introduction: The Tradition of Stagolee | p. 1 |
| I. Stagolee and St. Louis | |
| 1. Stagolee Shot Billy | p. 21 |
| 2. Lee Shelton: The Man behind the Myth | p. 37 |
| 3. That Bad Pimp of Old St. Louis: The Oral Poetry of the Late 1890s | p. 48 |
| 4. "Poor Billy Lyons" | p. 59 |
| 5. Narrative Events and Narrated Events | p. 70 |
| 6. Stagolee and Politics | p. 79 |
| 7. Under the Lid: The Underside of the Political Struggle | p. 84 |
| 8. The Black Social Clubs | p. 93 |
| 9. Hats and Nicknames: Symbolic Values | p. 98 |
| 10. Ragtime and Stagolee | p. 105 |
| 11. The Blues and Stagolee | p. 110 |
| II. The Thousand Faces of Stagolee | |
| 12. Jim Crow and Oral Narrative | p. 119 |
| 13. Riverboat Rouster and Mean Mate | p. 122 |
| 14. Work Camps, Hoboes, and Shack Bully Hollers | p. 127 |
| 15. William Marion Reedy's White Outlaw | p. 129 |
| 16. Cowboy Stagolee and Hillbilly Blues | p. 134 |
| 17. Blueswomen: Stagolee Did Them Wrong | p. 144 |
| 18. Bluesmen and Black Bad Man | p. 148 |
| 19. On the Trail of Sinful Stagolee | p. 157 |
| 20. Stagolee in a World Full of Trouble | p. 163 |
| 21. From Rhythm and Blues to Rock and Roll: "I Heard My Bulldog Bark" | p. 172 |
| 22. The Toast: Bad Black Hero of the Black Revolution | p. 177 |
| 23. Folklore/Poplore: Bob Dylan's Stagolee | p. 184 |
| III. Mammy-Made: Stagolee and American Identity | |
| 24. The "Bad Nigger" Trope in American Literature | p. 193 |
| 25. James Baldwin's "Staggerlee Wonders" | p. 206 |
| 26. Stagolee as Cultural and Political Hero | p. 212 |
| 27. Stagolee and Modernism | p. 217 |
| Notes | p. 231 |
| Bibliography | p. 261 |
| Index | p. 287 |
