December 25, 1895: The Legend of Stagger Lee

Lloyd Price

December 25, 1895: The legend of "Stagger Lee" is born. Lee Shelton, a black pimp known as "Stack" or "Stacker" Lee, ran an, um, entertainment venue called the Four Hundred Club in St. Louis. He and William Lyons, also involved in the St. Louis underworld, were drinking in the Bill Curtis Saloon. They began to argue, and Lyons took Shelton's Stetson hat off his head. For this offense, Shelton shot Lyons, killing him.

Shelton was convicted, served 12 years for murder, was imprisoned again for robbery, and died in prison in 1912.

As early as 1897, during Shelton's trial, the 1st song about the murder was performed. It spread throughout American music, black and white alike, and, depending on the singer's accent, the perpetrator (and thus the title) could be "Stack-o-Lee," "Stag-o-Lee," "Stacker Lee," "Stagger Lee," and so on. The legendary New Orleans pianist Mac "Dr. John" Rebennack claimed that there were so many versions, he could sing the song for half an hour and never repeat a verse.

Eventually, "Stagger Lee" became the best-known version. But the song, as most people know it now, gets the details wrong: In most versions, "Stagger Lee" and "Billy" are shooting dice in an alley late at night, and Billy, having already won Stagger Lee's Stetson hat, tries to cheat him. So Stagger Lee goes home, gets his gun, goes to the bar, and, despite Billy pleading for his life -- "I got three little children and a very... sickly wife!" -- shoots him. (I wonder if one of the versions that Dr. John knew went, "I got three little children and a very... ugly wife!")

Fred Waring & His Pennsylvanians became the 1st white act to record it, in 1923. Lloyd Price hit Number 1 with it in 1959, but there was a problem: It was on ABC-Paramount Records, and ABC not only owned the label, but aired American Bandstand. That show couldn't have the Number 1 song in the country played for teenagers, on live national daytime television, with the words, "Stagger Lee shot Billy, oh, he shot that poor boy so bad, 'til the bullet came through Billy and it broke the bartender's glass!" (How did that couplet get past 1950s censors in the first place?)

So they had Price record a cleaned-up version, in which Billy stole Stagger Lee's girlfriend, but he feels bad about it, and gives her back, and the guys make up, and are both alive at the end. The way to tell the difference is at the beginning: In the original version, Price sings, in his New Orleans accent, "The night was Claire," while in the cleaned-up version, he sings it straight, "The night was clear." In both versions, "the Moon was yellow, and the leaves came tumbling down" -- making the opening a haiku (five syllables, then seven, then five), and also suggesting that the song takes place in  Autumn, several weeks before Christmas.

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December 25, 1895 was a Wednesday. Baseball was out of season, hockey was all-amateur, basketball was a recent invention, and this was before college football was playing bowl games, let alone on Christmas Day.

But in England, soccer, or "football" as they call it, had a tradition: To keep traveling to a minimum, and thus families together, 2 nearby teams would play at one's home ground on Christmas Day, and at the other's on the next day, December 26, Boxing Day. This tradition began to die out in the 1950s, but Boxing Day games are still played.

On December 25, 1895, the London-based team which I would eventually support, then known as Woolwich Arsenal, played, but not against a nearby team: They hosted Burslem Port Vale, at the Manor Ground in Plumstead, Kent, later to be a part of Southeast London, and won, 2-1.