#stack o lee

[gimmefrisson]

[surfacen0ise]

Samuel L. Jackson, Cristina Ricci and a whole mess of blues.

Love that film

[badluckpondsbdb]

First recording of the American folk song Stagger Lee. A 1959 version by Lloyd Price reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Being a murder ballad about killing someone over a Stetson hat, Price’s version holds the distinction of being the first censored rock’n roll song. 

[murderousballads]

In light of the article from The Bluegrass Situation, here are three of my favorite versions of the tale of Stagger Lee. Above, Lloyd Price's foot tapping version. And next, Nick Cave's, which unsurprisingly has a far more menacing feel to it (also nsfw):

And it would be a crime not to include Ma Rainey's 1926 Version "Stack O'Lee Blues":

[rootsnblues]

[endofrains]

Alice Mae - Stack-O-Lee - Black Snake Moan 2006

Starring Samuel L. Jackson - Christina Ricci

Murder Ballads & Other Stories On Christmas Day in 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 and a supporter of the Republican party. Stack was a Democrat. 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, he shot him dead. When Shelton was released from prison in 1909, Stack-O-Lee was already being sung throughout the southern states and by 1911 had even made its way into the Journal of American Folklore in an article by John Lomax. Shelton undoubtedly bolstered the song's popularity even more when, months after his release from prison for murdering Lyons, he killed another man during a robbery.

[inlovingmemory2]

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