In 1895 in St. Louis, on a cold, dark Christmas eve, Lee “Stag” Shelton and William “Billy” Lyons had themselves a card game. There are different versions of what happened, but everyone agreed that they got into an argument over Stagger Lee’s Stetson hat and he killed Billy Lyons. Shelton got probation, though he later died in jail after assaulting another man. As the songs makes clear, Stagger Lee was a bad man.
No one knows who wrote the first version of the song. It showed up by 1897 and a published version appeared in 1911. By 1923, Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians had recorded an instrumental version with the title. “Stack O’ Lee Blues.”
The version here comes from Mississippi John Hurt’s 1928 recording and that provided the roots for the many, many versions that followed. Lloyd Price added background singers and horns to reach number one on the charts in 1958. Wilson Pickett and Tommy Roe both had hits with it and there are some tasty recordings by James Brown, Taj Mahal, Bob Dylan, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Woody Guthrie, and the Grateful Dead with a version only the Dead could do.
The lyrical versions do not all match the facts of the killing, but we don’t turn to music for facts, only the truth.
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YouTube: https://youtu.be/KWM82eQKdQk?si=UpClnB5tDnmWcU2o
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/4fY5SGfBY5x1hohc5BlGi8?si=3317d8ba01584369