Stagolee Shot Billy

Stagolee Shot Billy PDF Author: Cecil Brown
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674028906
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Although his story has been told countless times--by performers from Ma Rainey, Cab Calloway, and the Isley Brothers to Ike and Tina Turner, James Brown, and Taj Mahal--no one seems to know who Stagolee really is. Stack Lee? Stagger Lee? He has gone by all these names in the ballad that has kept his exploits before us for over a century. Delving into a subculture of St. Louis known as "Deep Morgan," Cecil Brown emerges with the facts behind the legend to unfold the mystery of Stack Lee and the incident that led to murder in 1895. How the legend grew is a story in itself, and Brown tracks it through variants of the song "Stack Lee"--from early ragtime versions of the '20s, to Mississippi John Hurt's rendition in the '30s, to John Lomax's 1940s prison versions, to interpretations by Lloyd Price, James Brown, and Wilson Pickett, right up to the hip-hop renderings of the '90s. Drawing upon the works of James Baldwin, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison, Brown describes the powerful influence of a legend bigger than literature, one whose transformation reflects changing views of black musical forms, and African Americans' altered attitudes toward black male identity, gender, and police brutality. This book takes you to the heart of America, into the soul and circumstances of a legend that has conveyed a painful and elusive truth about our culture.

Stagolee Shot Billy

Stagolee Shot Billy PDF Author: Cecil Brown
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674028906
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Although his story has been told countless times--by performers from Ma Rainey, Cab Calloway, and the Isley Brothers to Ike and Tina Turner, James Brown, and Taj Mahal--no one seems to know who Stagolee really is. Stack Lee? Stagger Lee? He has gone by all these names in the ballad that has kept his exploits before us for over a century. Delving into a subculture of St. Louis known as "Deep Morgan," Cecil Brown emerges with the facts behind the legend to unfold the mystery of Stack Lee and the incident that led to murder in 1895. How the legend grew is a story in itself, and Brown tracks it through variants of the song "Stack Lee"--from early ragtime versions of the '20s, to Mississippi John Hurt's rendition in the '30s, to John Lomax's 1940s prison versions, to interpretations by Lloyd Price, James Brown, and Wilson Pickett, right up to the hip-hop renderings of the '90s. Drawing upon the works of James Baldwin, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison, Brown describes the powerful influence of a legend bigger than literature, one whose transformation reflects changing views of black musical forms, and African Americans' altered attitudes toward black male identity, gender, and police brutality. This book takes you to the heart of America, into the soul and circumstances of a legend that has conveyed a painful and elusive truth about our culture.

I, Stagolee

I, Stagolee PDF Author: Cecil Brown
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
ISBN: 1583943927
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
It's the birth year of Ragtime music, 1895, and Lee "Stagolee" Shelton, a St. Louis pimp, murders Billy Lyons, a political gang member. Afterwards, Stagolee makes a deal with Judge Murphy to bring order to the underworld. As a member of a group of pimps called the "Stags," Stagolee makes alliances with the Democratic Party and votes for a Democratic Mayor. Later, the Stag Party, along with the Democratic Party, elects St. Louis's first black policeman. It is this policeman who is sent to arrest Stagolee for the murder of Billy Lyons. Now, nearly 50 years after singer Lloyd Price introduced mainstream audiences to the "Stagger Lee" story, Cecil Brown portrays the events that gave rise to this mainstay of African-American popular culture. This follows the successful Stagolee Shot Billy, Brown's nonfiction account of the same story.

Stagger Lee

Stagger Lee PDF Author: Derek McCulloch
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781582406077
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A graphic novel adaptation of the legend of Lee Shelton, better known as Stagger Lee, which tells of the dice game that led to Lee shooting and killing Billy Lyons, and which inspired the famous song.

Hear My Sad Story

Hear My Sad Story PDF Author: Richard Polenberg
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501701487
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
In 2015, Bob Dylan said, "I learned lyrics and how to write them from listening to folk songs. And I played them, and I met other people that played them, back when nobody was doing it. Sang nothing but these folk songs, and they gave me the code for everything that's fair game, that everything belongs to everyone." In Hear My Sad Story, Richard Polenberg describes the historical events that led to the writing of many famous American folk songs that served as touchstones for generations of American musicians, lyricists, and folklorists. Those events, which took place from the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, often involved tragic occurrences: murders, sometimes resulting from love affairs gone wrong; desperate acts borne out of poverty and unbearable working conditions; and calamities such as railroad crashes, shipwrecks, and natural disasters. All of Polenberg’s account of the songs in the book are grounded in historical fact and illuminate the social history of the times. Reading these tales of sorrow, misfortune, and regret puts us in touch with the dark but terribly familiar side of American history. On Christmas 1895 in St. Louis, an African American man named Lee Shelton, whose nickname was "Stack Lee," shot and killed William Lyons in a dispute over seventy-five cents and a hat. Shelton was sent to prison until 1911, committed another murder upon his release, and died in a prison hospital in 1912. Even during his lifetime, songs were being written about Shelton, and eventually 450 versions of his story would be recorded. As the song—you may know Shelton as Stagolee or Stagger Lee—was shared and adapted, the emotions of the time were preserved, but the fact that the songs described real people, real lives, often fell by the wayside. Polenberg returns us to the men and women who, in song, became legends. The lyrics serve as valuable historical sources, providing important information about what had happened, why, and what it all meant. More important, they reflect the character of American life and the pathos elicited by the musical memory of these common and troubled lives.

Unprepared To Die

Unprepared To Die PDF Author: Paul Slade
Publisher: Soundcheck Books
ISBN: 099294807X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 151

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Book Description
The Gory Stories Behind The Murder Ballads Cheerfully vulgar, revelling in gore, and always with an eye on the main chance, murder ballads are tabloid newspapers set to music, carrying word of the latest ‘orrible murders to an insatiable public. Victims are bludgeoned, stabbed or shot in every verse and killers often hanged, but the songs themselves never die. Instead, they mutate – morphing to suit local place names as they criss cross the Atlantic and continue to fascinate each generation’s biggest musical stars. Paul Slade traces this fascinating genre’s history through eight of its greatest songs. Stagger Lee’s “biographers” alone include Duke Ellington, James Brown, Bob Dylan, Dr John, The Clash and Nick Cave. No two tell his story in quite the same way. Covering eight classic murder ballads, including “Knoxville Girl”, “Tom Dooley” and “Frankie & Johnny”, Slade investigates the real-life murder which inspired each song and traces its musical development down the decades. Billy Bragg, The Bad Seeds’ Mick Harvey, Laura Cantrell, Rennie Sparks of The Handsome Family and a host of other leading musicians add their own insights.

The Life and Loves of Mr. Jiveass Nigger

The Life and Loves of Mr. Jiveass Nigger PDF Author: Cecil Brown
Publisher: Frog Books
ISBN: 9781583942109
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
“If you're black you don't need to get at anything. You're already there. You can live right out of your insides.” So says the antihero of this legendary novel that reimagines the Bible’s prodigal son as a young black man in post-Civil Rights-era America. George Washington—one of his many aliases—is a classic trickster figure, a blend of con artist, deep thinker, and willing object of white women’s sexual fantasies. Fed up with life in racist America, he leaves his rural South for Denmark on a curious quest, determined to discover if there is “any mother fucker in this despiteful world who ever told himself the truth.” In Denmark he spends his days bantering with fellow black expatriates and his nights bedding a series of white women who project their desires on him. Inevitably, these worlds collide, with Washington, aka Anthony Miller, aka Paul Winthrop, aka Mr. Jiveass Nigger, increasingly alienated in a world of opportunists. A return to America after his self-imposed exile promises transformation, but is Washington too far gone? Cecil Brown brings blistering prose, unabashed eroticism, and biting satire to this controversial masterpiece that’s as timely today as when it was first published.

Life of a Song

Life of a Song PDF Author: Jan Dalley
Publisher: Nicholas Brealey
ISBN: 1473670470
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Who knew that Paul McCartney originally referred to Yesterday as 'Scrambled Eggs' because he couldn't think of any lyrics for his heart-breaking tune? Or that Patti LaBelle didn't know what 'Voulez-vous couches avec moi ce soir?' actually meant? These and countless other fascinating back stories of some of our best-known and best-loved songs fill this book, a collection of the highly successful weekly The Life of a Song columns that appear in the FT Weekend every Saturday. Each 600-word piece gives a mini-biography of a single song, from its earliest form (often a spiritual, or a jazz number), through the various covers and changes, often morphing from one genre to another, always focusing on the 'biography' of the song itself while including the many famous artists who have performed or recorded it. The selection covers a wide spectrum of the songs we all know and love - rock, pop, folk, jazz and more. Each piece is pithy, sparkily written, knowledgeable, entertaining, full of anecdotes and surprises. They combine deep musical knowledge with the vivid background of the performers and musicians, and of course the often intriguing social and political background against which the songs were created.

Leavin' Trunk Blues

Leavin' Trunk Blues PDF Author: Ace Atkins
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312977184
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Nick Travers becomes involved in the forty-year-old murder of a blues record producer, a crime for which the victim's potentially innocent lover, Ruby Walker, has spent forty years in prison.

Stories from Songs

Stories from Songs PDF Author: Gail de Vos
Publisher: Libraries Unlimited
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 504

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Book Description
The sensational content of folk ballads makes them especially attractive to young adults. In this fascinating study of folk ballads and their evolution, you'll explore various renditions of such popular songs as Frankie and Johnny, Stagolee, Pretty Polly, and Barbara Allen, as well as lesser known ballads (e.g., Lord Thomas and Fair Annet, Twa Sisters, and King Orfeo). You'll learn about the origins of the stories, how they have developed and changed over time, traveled throughout countries and across oceans, and ultimately evolved into literary forms, such as poetry, novels, and graphic novels, many of which are directed at young adults. Citing numerous critical interpretations and commentary, this book offers great insight into this genre of popular folk literature. After an introduction to the form and its place in history, the author explores various types of ballads (e.g., child ballads, border ballads, broadside ballads). An examination of modern and contemporary re-workings of ballads, organized by themes, comprises the heart of the book. Ballad types covered include: tragic love stories, murder ballads, otherworld beings, tricks and disguises, and ballads from other cultures. Oral origins and history, critical interpretations, re-workings, and current recordings are included for each ballad; along with a list of resources.

A Lush and Seething Hell

A Lush and Seething Hell PDF Author: John Hornor Jacobs
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062880845
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
A World Fantasy Award Nominee! The award-winning and critically-acclaimed master of horror returns with a pair of chilling tales that examine the violence and depravity of the human condition. Bringing together his acclaimed novella The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky and an all-new short novel My Heart Struck Sorrow, John Hornor Jacobs turns his fertile imagination to the evil that breeds within the human soul. A brilliant mix of the psychological and supernatural, blending the acute insight of Roberto Bolaño and the eerie imagination of H. P. Lovecraft, The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky examines life in a South American dictatorship. Centered on the journal of a poet-in-exile and his failed attempts at translating a maddening text, it is told by a young woman trying to come to grips with a country that nearly devoured itself. In My Heart Struck Sorrow, a librarian discovers a recording from the Deep South—which may be the musical stylings of the Devil himself. Breathtaking and haunting, A Lush and Seething Hell is a terrifying and exhilarating journey into the darkness, an odyssey into the deepest reaches of ourselves that compels us to confront secrets best left hidden.