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Lloyd Price - Stagger Lee
Stagger Lee is based loosely upon a true life event… the hat (yes, “hat”) related murder of William “Billy” Lyons by Stagger Lee Shelton in St. Louis on Christmas Eve, 1895.
The crime was immortalized (and mythologized) in the folk/blues/story-telling tradition, and has been played and recorded as, variously; “Stagger Lee”, “Stagolee”, “Stackerlee”, “Stack O’Lee”, “Stack-a-Lee” (Shelton, apparently was a tall man… as tall as the stack of the steamboat Robert E. Lee).
Mississippi John Hurt’s 1928 version of the song is generally credited as being the first version of the song as we now know it, and this, the Lloyd Price version from 1958, is the one that made the song famous.
From the album, The Exciting Lloyd Price (ABC Paramount)
we <3 all the Stagger Lee we can get
