|
Post by AlanB on Oct 14, 2013 10:35:51 GMT -5
This book has been on loan to a friend for the best part of five years and finally it's back where it belongs. It cost me the UK equivalent of $30 but well worth all of that. Here's the author's website. cecilbrown.net/stagolee/
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Oct 14, 2013 11:13:15 GMT -5
This book has been on loan to a friend for the best part of five years and finally it's back where it belongs. It cost me the UK equivalent of $30 but well worth all of that. Here's the author's website. cecilbrown.net/stagolee/Thanks Alan. I learned this song (in country music fashion) way back in the dark ages - 40's. Doc Watson's version which features great guitar work. Here's a little more on Cecil Brown's book (taken from This WebsiteDec 27, 1895: The legend of "Stagger Lee" is born Murder and mayhem have been the subject of many popular songs over the years, though more often than not, the tales around which such songs revolve tend to be wholly fictional. Johnny Cash never shot a man in Reno, and the events related in such famous story songs as "El Paso" and "I Shot The Sheriff" never actually took place. The same cannot be said, however, about "Stagger Lee"—a song that has drifted from the facts somewhat over the course of its many lives in the last 100-plus years, but a song inspired by an actual murder that took place on this day in 1895, in a St. Louis, Missouri, barroom argument involving a man named Billy and another named "Stag" Lee. Under the headline "Shot in Curtis's Place," the story that ran in the next day's edition of the St. Louis Daily Globe-Democrat began, "William Lyons, 25, colored, a levee hand... was shot in the abdomen yesterday evening at 10 o'clock in the saloon of Bill Curtis... by Lee Sheldon, also colored." According to the Globe-Democrat's account, Billy Lyons and "Stag" Lee Sheldon "had been drinking and were in exuberant spirits" when an argument over "politics" boiled over, and Lyons "snatched Sheldon's hat from his head." While subsequent musical renditions of this story would depict the dispute as one over gambling, they would preserve the key detail of "Stag" Lee Sheldon's headwear and of his matter-of-fact response to losing it: "Sheldon drew his revolver and shot Lyons in the abdomen... When his victim fell to the floor Sheldon took his hat from the hand of the wounded man and coolly walked away." In his 2003 book Stagolee Shot Billy, based on his earlier doctoral dissertation on the subject, scholar Cecil Brown recounts the story of how the real "Stag" Lee became an iconic figure in African-American folklore and how his story became the subject of various musical renderings "from the [age of the] steamboat to the electronic age in the American 21st century." The most famous of those musical renditions were 1928's "Stack O' Lee Blues" by Mississippi John Hurt and 1959's "Stagger Lee," an unlikely #1 pop hit for Lloyd Price. Versions of the story have also appeared, however, in songs by artists as wide-ranging as Woody Guthrie, Duke Ellington, Bob Dylan, James Brown, The Clash, the Grateful Dead and Nick Cave.
|
|
|
Post by AlanB on Oct 14, 2013 11:22:06 GMT -5
UK's weekly "pop" paper, New Musical Express, of 20 Feb 1959 came up with this headline Lloyd Price Stacks Up a Hit with Stagger Lee.Ugh.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Oct 14, 2013 11:31:22 GMT -5
UK's weekly "pop" paper, New Musical Express, of 20 Feb 1959 came up with this headline Lloyd Price Stacks Up a Hit with Stagger Lee.Ugh. I take it you're not a fan of Lloyd Price's version. That was, after all, during the emergence of R&B... Mississippi John Hurt had the best version (In my humble opinion)
|
|
|
Post by AlanB on Oct 14, 2013 11:43:43 GMT -5
I'm a great fan of Lloyd P and have a number of his Specialty 45s. My "ugh" was for the pun in the headline.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Oct 14, 2013 12:08:03 GMT -5
I'm a great fan of Lloyd P and have a number of his Specialty 45s. My "ugh" was for the pun in the headline. Understood smiley-eatdrink004
|
|
|
Post by dadfad on Oct 15, 2013 11:00:45 GMT -5
I have a friend who collects Stackolee/Stagger Lee/Stag-O-Lee/etc recordings. He gave me copies on cassettes of over a hundred and fifty recordings of the tune, from John Hurt to Bobby Rydell to Steve James and everything in between!
My favorite version is by Bowling Green John Cephas.
|
|
|
Post by AlanB on Oct 15, 2013 11:34:13 GMT -5
I have a friend who collects Stackolee/Stagger Lee/Stag-O-Lee/etc recordings. He gave me copies on cassettes of over a hundred and fifty recordings of the tune, from John Hurt to Bobby Rydell to Steve James and everything in between! I Don't know if this is by the person you know but the following pretty impressive. www.staggerlee.com/pgs/the-list.php
|
|
|
Post by dadfad on Oct 15, 2013 16:02:15 GMT -5
I have a friend who collects Stackolee/Stagger Lee/Stag-O-Lee/etc recordings. He gave me copies on cassettes of over a hundred and fifty recordings of the tune, from John Hurt to Bobby Rydell to Steve James and everything in between! I Don't know if this is by the person you know but the following pretty impressive. www.staggerlee.com/pgs/the-list.phpI just emailed him to see if it was him.
|
|
|
Post by AlanB on Oct 16, 2013 0:03:45 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by carolinablues on Oct 17, 2013 12:58:57 GMT -5
In "African Banjo Echoes in Appalachia: A Study of Folk Traditions", Author Cecelia Conway has some great info see notes on page 278 link
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Dec 2, 2013 13:54:52 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by AlanB on Dec 3, 2013 1:42:09 GMT -5
I've enjoyed many an enlightening email exchange with Jim Hauser and his research on this topic.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Dec 3, 2013 8:12:32 GMT -5
I found the section on the significance of the "Stetson Hat" extremely interesting. Reminded me of the old adage, "The guys in the "white" hats are good guys...the black hats are bad guys".
|
|