#stack o lee

Love that film

First recording of the American folk song Stagger Lee. A 1959 version by Lloyd Price reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Being a murder ballad about killing someone over a Stetson hat, Price’s version holds the distinction of being the first censored rock’n roll song. 

Murder Ballads & Other Stories On Christmas Day in 1895, a local pimp named "Stack" Lee Shelton walked into a St. Louis bar wearing pointed shoes, a box-back coat, and his soon-to-be infamous milk-white John B. Stetson hat. Stack joined his friend Billy Lyons for a drink. Their conversation settled on politics, and soon it grew hostile: Lyons was a levee hand and, like his brother-in-law—one of the richest black men in St. Louis at the time and a supporter of the Republican party. Stack was a Democrat. The details of their argument aren't known, but at some point Lyons snatched the Stetson off Stack's head. Stack demanded it back, and when Lyons refused, he shot him dead. When Shelton was released from prison in 1909, Stack-O-Lee was already being sung throughout the southern states and by 1911 had even made its way into the Journal of American Folklore in an article by John Lomax. Shelton undoubtedly bolstered the song's popularity even more when, months after his release from prison for murdering Lyons, he killed another man during a robbery.