This is Chapter 5 of Stagolee: A Digital Compendium.   See also Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, and Chapter 4.

Introduction

The original idea for this post was to look at Stagolee in the 21st century, to see what’s happened to this ballad in our new age.  Sounds easy enough, right?  We’ve only thirteen years to consider.  Of course, if you go by “The Definitive List of Stagger Lee Songs“, it means listening to at least 114 recordings just up to 2010, then digging through the past three years using my Spotify playlist.  A rough estimate puts that at something like one new Stagolee recording coming out every five weeks or so since the year 2000!

So, I might be charged today with failure to be comprehensive, but I didn’t have time this week to dig so deeply into all that.  I trust you’ll acquit me – I do have a day job after all.

Oh, I tried to narrow it down.  I didn’t consider any new or re-released recordings representing an artist performing his or her Stagolee hit from back in the day.  Likewise, I thought it made sense to avoid performances that are faithful though not innovative covers of an older classic version.

That still left me with several dozen tracks to comb through.  And I did quite a bit – but it’s only safe to say that the songs below represent the best I’ve heard of the 21st century, so far.  We’ll just call it “Stagolee – The 21st Century, Part 1”.

As well, I’ve only included tracks that I find personally moving and aesthetically pleasing.  On that account, I’ll take more seriously any charge that I’m selectively trying to prove my point and ignoring evidence to the contrary.

Oh – what’s my point, you ask?

Stagolee survives in the new century as it always has – by being both a flexible and highly effective psychological tool of art.  As such, it is still truly flourishing.  Historically, its utility as a means of redefining black manhood in a world of white privilege and racial hostility is well-established.  But the ballad’s racial context is not always relevant in 21st century performances.  Of course, that doesn’t mean these new versions can’t evoke psychological responses that are as powerful – they surely do.  And it doesn’t mean that they take away from the Stagolee of black history – they surely don’t.

I’m just saying Stagolee has not yet breathed his last on the gallows; and with his face covered, his color doesn’t matter.  He’s still got something to say, and we always seem to listen when he speaks.  And at least some of what he’s saying to us now squares with what we’re always on about in this blog.  Some of today’s most relevant variants, to me, put the post-modern Stagolee well within our blog’s admittedly broad definition of ‘murder ballad’.  Indeed, some of them are significantly easier to see that way than their parents, those classics that we love so well.

A Note on Classification

I will use, loosely, Long-Wilgus’s typology of traditional ballad singers to organize the performances for this presentation.  I do not propose to prove anything about her work, and I recognize the typology was not meant to be applied to recorded music willy-nilly.  I just find it helpful for handling so many variations on what is ultimately a stable Stagolee narrative.  I’ll give one example for each of her four ballad-singer types today.

Integrators

Let’s start strong.

Integrators take a ballad and almost wholly recreate it, according to Long-Wilgus.  The best songs in my sampling so far fall in to this category.  It’s well to note though that ‘recreate’ in the case of this ballad does *not* usually mean changing the fundamental element of the narrative.  Stagolee shot Billy, folks.  Messing with that is like spitting in the bad man’s hat.  The rest of the narrative is legitimately up for grabs though.

The Black Keys are a well-known 21st century rock duo; and if you don’t know them yet, this version of our ballad of choice is a fine introduction.  The guitarist/vocalist Dan Auerbach explained some of the impetus for cutting this version – “I had Mississippi John Hurt’s version and a bunch of other people’s versions, and I thought, ‘These guys all wrote their own versions of this song; why couldn’t I do my own version?’ ”

YouTube version of “Stack Shot Billy” by the Black Keys

Lyrics for “Stack Shot Billy” by the Black Keys

Auerbach’s jagged guitar and the simple, driving rhythm of Patrick Carney’s drums could easily fall into something derivative or pedestrian, but they just don’t.  Musically, this doesn’t sound like any other version of Stagolee I know.  More importantly, it works – the music suggests you are indeed in the presence of a bad, bad man.

Lyrically, this is also a wholly original approach.  Stack shot Billy, but there’s no context of race here, only of the deepest human desperation.  An evil brain and cocaine, in some combination, lead to Stack’s execution of Billy.  And execution it is – “Stack shot Billy in the back of the head.”  We don’t get to know if it’s a drug deal gone bad or if there’s some other motive.  It doesn’t matter.

In this version, Stack isn’t going to rule hell as he does in some others.  He knows all too well that he’s headed there though – Billy, on the other hand, is headed to the Promised Land.  The moral outline is starkly drawn.  In this then lies the psychological crux.  It is not about race at all, but the issue of *identity* is central as it has always been in this ballad.  The music and lyrics force you to the looking glass, before Stack’s bullet breaks it.   Maybe you can identify with Stack, maybe with Billy – maybe both.  But it’s all very human, and ultimately timeless.

Why do we turn out good, or bad?  Does it matter when we die?  The song doesn’t give arrogant answers.  It just asks questions in ways that evoke being pistol-whipped with a .45.

Perseverators

Perseverators, according to Long-Wilgus, “try to faithfully memorize and repeat the song they hear.”  As I said above, I thought it a bit of a waste of time to present such versions of Stagolee, unless they showed some element of innovation within the spirit of the definition.  This ballad has no need to stand still.

Eric Bibb‘s live version from 2007 is just such a moving track, and demonstrates that even the Stagolee of old can find a place in the 21st century.

YouTube version of Eric Bibb’s “Stagolee”     Lyrics (see below)

Bibb achieves something that one might expect just couldn’t work.  He effectively mixes traditional elements of both Mississippi John Hurt’s and Taj Mahal’s performances, while integrating them with his own style in delivery.  A lesser musician would never be able to pull off such delicate synthesis – but Bibb is an undeniable master.

Lyrically, this is almost entirely a reproduction of Mississippi John Hurt’s version, though he adds one key verse from Taj Mahal’s – as if to make Hurt’s lyrics just exactly perfect – after Hurt’s signature ‘boom boom’ verse.

You know, Stagolee shot Billy,
shot that boy so bad.
The bullet went through Billy,
broke the bartender’s looking glass…

Musically and lyrically, we seem to be listening more to Hurt than Taj Mahal, but vocally in terms of style and delivery the opposite seems true.  However, Bibb is able to make himself part of the band and chorus, so it never sounds derivative.  And though this is ‘old-school’ Stagolee, to me, something about the way Bibb articulates each note on the fret board, the way he intones the sacred lines, speaks to humanity well beyond self-imposed divisions like race.

How can it be?  The balance he keeps, using his own creative intuition as a level, is remarkable.   Watch his performances on YouTube.  His musicianship is superb; but more importantly, he’s doing it old-school psychologically too.  It seems to me Bibb is not just playing Stagolee – through his guitar and voice he is being Stagolee.  I’d be surprised if he didn’t see it that way as a performer on some significant level, and I hope I get to ask him about it some day!

Confabulators

Long-Wilgus defines ‘confabulators’ as singers “who enjoy expanding and embellishing [a ballad] in order to make it more entertaining to their audiences.”  In a loose sense, confabulators are probably *the* main reason for the ballad’s consistent presence and relevance in American society.  The core narrative stays stable and is constantly re-imagined with all sorts of musical and lyric embellishment.

Certainly, we can call Martin Simpson‘s 2009 recording of Stagolee a ‘confabulation’ then, and a wonderful one at that.

YouTube version of Martin Simpson’s “Stagolee”    Lyrics for “Stagolee” by Martin Simpson

Lyrically, Simpson draws from multiple sources for a ‘cut and paste’ product that shows nothing of its seams and glue.  He also embellishes the story in his own way; though by setting the date as 1895 and the site as St. Louis, ironically, his additions return the narrative closer to the actual historical murder of Billy Lyons.  Still, Simpson is not going for some pedantic music historian’s take on the ballad.

Stagolee shot Billy in 18 and 95
Billy DeLyons in the graveyard
Stagolee, he’s still alive.

It’s an homage to the ballad itself in a way, and Simpson essentially proves in his act of ‘confabulation’ the very thing he’s singing about – this song lives on.

Musically as well Simpson’s approach is one of embellishment – using instruments such as the banjo and accordion in a new way with this ballad, even while sticking pretty tightly to the rhythm and melody of the traditional strain of the ballad represented by Mississippi John Hurt.

The overall package is one we’ve seen many times here in this blog – an upbeat song that brings news of terrible violence.  How can we resist?

Rationalizers

Finally, we have the ‘rationalizers’, who Long-Wilgus defines as singers “who intentionally shape the story so that it conforms to their own esthetic or moral values.”  And indeed, we have another fine 21st century example for this category as well.

Now, keep in mind that the ‘shaping’ can be aesthetic as well.  It’s hard to imagine turning the traditional lyrics of Stagolee into a simple morality play, but I think we find a bit of rationalizing both lyrically and musically in Jonathan Byrd‘s 2003 recording, “Stackalee.”

Lyrics for Jonathan Byrd’s “Stackalee”

First, if you’re not familiar with Byrd, let’s be clear that he’s not a blues player per se.  In the old days they’d probably just have called him a folksinger, but that isn’t quite right either.  Our hip, sophisticated post-modern vocabulary allows us to use a phrase like ‘roots musician’ or ‘performer of Americana’. Those may be too vague to mean much in the end, but might be more accurate.  My point though is that Byrd clearly didn’t cut this as a new blues take on an old  blues standard. There’s grit here, and he added some of the sand.

Let’s also be clear that Byrd’s source material is well-known – the performance of the chain-gang version of “Stagolee” by the prisoner “Bama” (W.D. Stewart) at Parchman Farm in 1947, recorded by John and Alan Lomax.

So, what has Byrd ‘rationalized’ here?  First, lyrically he’s dropped Bama’s last five verses, four of which were misogynistic and none of which really made sense strictly with the narrative.  The missing verses made perfect sense in the context of what Bama was going through, as we discussed in an earlier chapter, as a black prisoner is a deeply hostile white southern prison system.  But that context is irrelevant here, and so too are those five verses.  Byrd wraps up the narrative is a much cleaner way.

Musically, Byrd keeps the deep emotional context of Bama’s performance.  The melody is certainly the same, and Byrd even stays rather true to Bama’s vocal articulation.  However, this is no longer a work song and Byrd shapes the overall aesthetic to evoke individual suffering in a different way.  The spare blues guitar tapping out the slow rhythm makes this almost a confessional poem.  The lyrics aren’t in the first person but, as with Bama, you get the feeling that Byrd is singing about himself – and further, in listening, that you can inhabit the song too.  It seems flexible enough that, again, one might identify either with Stack or Billy – though, either way, it’s a rough realization.

Coda

Clearly, there is more listening to do when it comes to Stagolee in the 21st century.  I probably won’t be getting back to Part 2 of this chapter for several months, so if you’re inclined to do some of your own analysis, you can start with “The Definitive List of Stagger Lee Songs” (which is not even comprehensive), sort by year and then have at Spotify.

The previous chapters of this compendium reference other resources on the ballad, so I won’t repeat all that here.

For now, I’ll take my leave and thank you again for reading and listening.  And if you just can’t get enough of this ballad, don’t worry – we may get back to Stagolee before too long.