February–March 1959
What can I say, this song is just plain awesome. It's based on an old blues song of obscure authorship, which in turn was apparently based on a real murder; the most famous recording before 1959 was by Mississippi John Hurt, who spells it "Stack O' Lee" but still seems to pronounce it the same. The older version is pretty different, and not just in the musical arrangement. The main theme in Hurt's version is made pretty explicit by the oft-repeated refrain: "That bad man / Oh, cruel Stack O' Lee." The later hit version stops at the murder, but Hurt goes on to tell of Lee's execution by hanging, further reinforcing the character's villainy: "At 12 o'clock they killed him / We was all glad to see him die."
Lloyd Price's telling is much more matter-of-fact. Stagger Lee got in a fight with Billy over gambling, went home to get his .44, and came back to shoot Billy dead. The morality of the situation is not explored. Stagger Lee might be the bad guy, but then again he might be the hero – the story is told completely from his perspective, and how about that upbeat rock and roll arrangement?
TV host Dick Clark surely acknowledged this moral ambiguity, and so his solution was to have the lyrics changed so that Price could appear on American Bandstand. The altered version is so absurd that it's practically a parody. Not only is there no gambling; there's no murder. Stagger Lee and Billy even make up at the end. History is full of Bowdlers and Braghettones – as long as there's art, there'll be people declaring it obscene. The good news is that history invariably sides with the artist. "Stagger Lee" is a classic, and the Dick Clark version has been relegated to a small corner of history (only 174 views on that Youtube video!).
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