The Mystery of Stack-O-Lee
April 4 2011
MORE THAN 400 ARTISTS HAVE RECORDED VERSIONS OF THE NOTORIOUS MURDER BALLAD—IF INDEED IT IS ONE.
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. What accounts for the story’s longevity?
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