Stagger Lee, a hack driver and pimp living in St. Louis, shot his friend Billy Lyons in a barroom in 1895. To this day people are still singing about the crime; the musical treatments have enlarged considerably on the sordid details of the murder, and many great musicians have tackled it.
It’s not hard to see why the Stagger Lee story has earned enduring fame—the basic details of the plot are that Billy Lyons at some point stole Lee’s Stetson hat, and Lee shoots him down without a second thought in order to reclaim the hat and punish his perfidious friend. Betrayal, hats, consumer desire, everything’s right there.
But actually the Stagger Lee myth draws on a long tradition of stories about people putting objects in front of human life. Think of the parallel story of emperor Augustus and Vedius Pollio, a wealthy knight. Augustus was dining at Pollio’s house when a slave broke a crystal glass. Pollio ordered the slave throw into a pit of lampreys, which Augustus thought was an overreaction. He ordered the slave saved, the lamprey pit emptied and the rest of Pollio’s glasses smashed. No one would accuse the ancient Romans of romanticizing the value of human life, and in the popular Roman mind the story became a parable about excess, not about being nice to your slaves, but there was something there in the relationship between people and objects that both the Romans and modern nerds found interesting.
Later we have Steinbeck’s The Pearl and also various news stories about people being shot for their sneakers. You get the idea. It’s horrifying and fascinating when people shoot or kill one another over valuable goods. And for some reason many, many musicians have interpreted Stagger Lee’s bloody little drama, some focusing on the hat, others reimagining it in more or less violent ways. Here are my four favorite versions—literally hundreds await a diligent searcher.
“Stack O’ Lee”
Mississippi John Hurt
Avalon Blues
(This is not the album version, and it’s burdened by some truly stupid images, but it’s also a greatly expanded version of the legend and a showcase for John Hurt charm, gentle voice and amazing guitar work.) “That bad man, oh cruel Stack O’ Lee,” goes the chorus of Hurt’s quiet, intricate version of the song. Many versions of the story build Lee up into a titan of cool contempt for the law; Hurt’s version is plaintive and insistent, asking for protection from Lee rather than praising his coolness and ready violence. “Police officer, how can it be?/You can arrest anybody but cruel Stack O’ Lee,” the song begins, going on to describe Billy Lyons’ pleas for his life and Lee’s execution by unanimous verdict of a jury. “What I care about your little babies, your darlin’ lovin’ wife?/you done stole my Stetson hat, now I’m bound to take your life,” is Lee’s only line, delivered through Hurt’s thin, steady voice. This version sounds almost like a Biblical parable. Lee gets unreasonably angry about Lyons stealing his hat and kills him despite Lyons’ obligation to his family; quickly and simply Lyons receives his punishment.
“Wrong ‘em Boyo”
The Clash
London Calling
The Clash’s brassy, freewheeling version of the song is a delight, and is also more about musical jouissance than it is about plot. Other groups dwell on the gloomy, blood-soaked aspects of the Stagger Lee mythos, but the Clash chose to cover reggae singer Clive Alphonso’s straightforward, ebullient treatment of the legend. In this version Billy Lyons tries to cheat Stagger at dice, then goes for him with a knife. We know whose side we’re supposed to be on. It’s hard to decide what’s more delightful—Joe Strummer’s signature sneering, nasal vocals or the ska-tinged perfection of the Irish Horns on brass. With its perfect drums, blaring organ, skanking guitar and the aforementioned brass section the song has a lush, driving sound that sets it apart from the mechanical, dour repetition of many Stagger Lee covers.
“Stack A Lee”
Bob Dylan
World Gone Wrong
(Not available on Youtube)
Well, if you thought Joe Strummer was nasal, think again. Dylan belts this one out straight through his nose, all the while rivaling John Hurt’s dazzling guitar work. Dylan’s version of the song musically echoes John Hurt’s, but it puts a comic spin on the legend, soft-pedaling the pathos and adding quirky little details: “Six big horses and a rubber-tired hack/Took him to the cemetery, but they failed to bring him back/All about that John B. Stetson hat,” sings Dylan about Billy Lyons. Lee responds to Lyons’ whining about his family with a sinister double entendre “God bless your children and I’ll take care of your wife,” so you know this version of Lee is a badass. But he gets his comeuppance, languishing in jail, friendless, sleepless and tormented by nocturnal visions of Billy Lyons. “All about that John B. Stetson hat,” goes the chorus, and it’s fighting over the hat the destroyed both Lee and Lyons’ lives. We never learn what happens to Lyons’ wife and family but I’m sure it’s not anything nice.
“Stagger Lee”
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds.
Murder Ballads
Nick Cave really goes to town on the Stagger Lee myth here, recording a profane, unbelievably violent version of the song that features more uses of the word “motherfucker” than most Wu Tang Clan albums. This version of Stagger Lee has been thrown out by his woman and chooses to spend a quiet evening at a bar named the Bucket of Blood. He’s annoyed that the bartender doesn’t recognize him: “Well bartender it’s plain to see/I’m that bad motherfucker called Stagger Lee/Mr. Stagger Lee” he tells him before shooting him several times in the head. This draws the attention of an ambitious young whore named Nelly Brown. She and Stagger decide on an amorous tryst, but then Brown makes the mistake of mentioning her live-in boyfriend Billy Dilly (we must forgive Cave his rhyming license here). Stagger Lee, surprisingly, exclaims that we would love to enjoy Mr. Dilly’s favors, which he does, at gunpoint, when Dilly comes in to the bar. Even for Cave this is a little much. The orchestration is minimal—a murky, roiling baseline and occasional stabs of piano, ending up with a horrible metallic shrieking. As with many of Cave’s songs the end result is the blackest sort of humor.
