I wasn’t there but I did hear the shots
By the time I arrived, the place was crawlin’ with cops…
••••
Justin Townes Earle, who will be here in Sisters in September for the Sisters Folk Festival, has crafted a “reimagining” of the original gangsta tune — with a nod and a wink titled “Same Old Stagolee.” JTE manages to update and completely change the story while being true to the feel of the original(s). I love it.
Mother Jones magazine served up a meditation on the whys and wherefores of the story and song’s evergreen popularity. It’s a good read. Here’s the backstory:
On Christmas Day, 1895, a local pimp named “Stack” Lee Shelton walked into a St. Louis bar wearing pointed shoes, a box-back coat, and his soon-to-be infamous milk-white John B. Stetson hat. Stack joined his friend Billy Lyons for a drink. Their conversation settled on politics, and soon it grew hostile: Lyons was a levee hand and, like his brother-in-law—one of the richest black men in St. Louis at the time—a supporter of the Republican party. Stack had aligned himself with the local black Democrats. The details of their argument aren’t known, but at some point Lyons snatched the Stetson off Stack’s head. Stack demanded it back, and when Lyons refused, shot him dead.
The story of Stack-O-Lee—or Stack O’Lee or Stagger Lee or Stack A Lee depending on who’s singing—became the popular subject of murder ballads and blues songs in the early 20th century. In the liner notes of a new collection, People Take Warning: Murder Ballads and Disaster Songs, 1913-1938, Tom Waits argues that most murder ballads are “just a cut above graffiti…the oral tabloids of the day.” They were written by street singers to capitalize on the pulp appeal of violent local crimes. Certainly the ballad of Stack-O-Lee seems to have begun this way. But unlike most ballads of its time, Stack-O-Lee’s has survived and flourished through the years….
…In all, under various titles, Stack-O-Lee has been recorded by more than 400 artists, an average of one new version every 10 weeks for the past 85 years.
The OG:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlniDmj10u8
Paul McNamee says
“…In all, under various titles, Stack-O-Lee has been recorded by more than 400 artists, an average of one new version every 10 weeks for the past 85 years.”
That is an impressive statistic!
Matthew says
The one I know best is Nick Cave’s version. The one Barracuda sings in Punisher Max. From what I remember it was a version created in prison. It also had more F-bombs than an entire gangster rap album.