Stagolee Shot Billy

Although his story has been told countless times--by performers from Ma Rainey, Cab Calloway, and the Isley Brothers to Ike and Tina Turner, James Brown, and Taj Mahal--no one seems to know who Stagolee really is. Stack Lee? Stagger Lee? He has gone by all these names in the ballad that has kept his exploits before us for over a century. Delving into a subculture of St. Louis known as "Deep Morgan," Cecil Brown emerges with the facts behind the legend to unfold the mystery of Stack Lee and the incident that led to murder in 1895.

How the legend grew is a story in itself, and Brown tracks it through variants of the song "Stack Lee"--from early ragtime versions of the '20s, to Mississippi John Hurt's rendition in the '30s, to John Lomax's 1940s prison versions, to interpretations by Lloyd Price, James Brown, and Wilson Pickett, right up to the hip-hop renderings of the '90s. Drawing upon the works of James Baldwin, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison, Brown describes the powerful influence of a legend bigger than literature, one whose transformation reflects changing views of black musical forms, and African Americans' altered attitudes toward black male identity, gender, and police brutality. This book takes you to the heart of America, into the soul and circumstances of a legend that has conveyed a painful and elusive truth about our culture.

Table of The Tradition of Stagolee

I. STAGOLEE AND ST. LOUIS

1. Stagolee Shot Billy 2. Lee The Man behind the Myth 3. That Bad Pimp of Old St. The Oral Poetry of the Late 1890s 4. "Poor Billy Lyons" 5. Narrative Events and Narrated Events 6. Stagolee and Politics 7. Under the The Underside of the Political Struggle 8. The Black Social Clubs 9. Hats and Symbolic Values 10. Ragtime and Stagolee 11. The Blues and Stagolee

II. THE THOUSAND FACES OF STAGOLEE

12. Jim Crow and Oral Narrative 13. Riverboat Rouster and Mean Mate 14. Work Camps, Hoboes, and Shack Bully Hollers 15. William Marion Reedy's White Outlaw 16. Cowboy Stagolee and Hillbilly Blues 17. Stagolee Did Them Wrong 18. Bluesmen and Black Bad Man 19. On the Trail of Sinful Stagolee 20. Stagolee in a World Full of Trouble 21. From Rhythm and Blues to Rock and "I Heard My Bulldog Bark" 22. The Bad Black Hero of the Black Revolution 23. Folklore/ Bob Dylan's Stagolee

III. STAGOLEE AND AMERICAN IDENTITY

24. The "Bad Nigger" Trope in American Literature 25. James Baldwin's "Staggerlee Wonders" 26. Stagolee as Cultural and Political Hero 27. Stagolee and Modernism

Notes Bibliography Index

Reviews of this In Stagolee Shot Billy...Brown revisits the archetypal story of "someone who was willing to defend himself if transgressed against, if his dignity was at stake." Songs about Stagolee have long been a staple of African-American music, with recordings by Ma Rainey, Duke Ellington, and Fats Domino...To analyze the legend, Mr. Brown draws on structuralist and formalist thinkers such as Mikhail Baktin, Claude Levi-Strauss, and Vladimir Propp...