Copyright © 2002-2005
by James P. Hauser
except where otherwise noted. All rights reserved.
Stagger Lee: From Mythic Blues Ballad to Ultimate Rock 'n' Roll Record
The AKA Blues Connection: Documenting the Blues Roots of Rock 'n' Roll
The Story of the Black Badman, the Stetson Hat, and the Ultimate Rock 'n' Roll record
Part 7: The Return of the Badman: Stagger Lee in the 21st Century
According to the late Joseph Campbell, a man who was one of America's greatest authorities on mythology, modern science and technology have greatly reduced the importance of myths in people's lives. But if he was alive today, he might agree that the myth of Stagger Lee is an exception. Stagger Lee's legend has not only survived the modern world, but may have actually grown in importance. Today, we find the figure of Stagger Lee in our books, in our movies, and in our music. He may have a different name now, such as the black writer Walter Mosley's character Mouse, but there is no mistaking who he is based on his violent actions and bad-ass "I answer to nobody" attitude (Note 1) The world has become a harder, much more dangerous and more violent place to live in, and, in this kind of environment, Stagger Lee's legendary ba-a-a-dness makes him very, very relevant. After all, a man who can beat the devil at his own game, take control of hell and turn it into his own version of paradise is not just the ultimate badman, he is also the ultimate survivor (Note 2).
Stagger Lee's importance in today's world is the subject of the rest of this essay, but let me backtrack a little bit, for now. It was not long after Lloyd Price had his late fifties hit with "Stagger Lee" that black rock and roll musicians faded from popularity and were replaced by artists who made soul music. During the sixties, black singers and vocal groups such as Aretha Franklin and The Temptations shared domination of the pop charts with white pop and rock groups like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Black music in the seventies was dominated by dance and party music--disco and funk. The legendary black outlaw Stagger Lee had all but disappeared from black music during this decade. But that was about to be changed by a new form of music known as rap.
Rap had some characteristics which it shared with rock and roll. Like rock, it was direct, dramatic, and powerful. ( Run D.M.C. even created rap's first pop top 10 hit when it teamed up with Aerosmith's Steven Tyler and Joe Perry in a remake of "Walk This Way".) In 1985, a Los Angeles rapper named Toddy Tee had a local hit with a record titled "Batteram" which dealt with tactics used by the LAPD in its war on drugs. It was a hint of what was to come. In the late 1980s, a group named N.W.A. (a polite abbreviation for Niggaz With Attitude) put gangster rap on the map. Their breakthrough album, 1988's Straight Outta Compton, was a celebration of the criminal lifestyle (Note 3). It was an album full of rage depicting mountains of violence with plenty of hell-raising and hedonism thrown in for good measure. Stagger Lee was back. And he was bigger and ba-a-a-a-der than ever. He had new street names like Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, and a moniker that most resembles his original--Eazy-E. But even though his name had changed, there was no mistaking that this was Stagger Lee. It was made crystal clear by the title of one song from the album--"F--k tha Police". By the early nineties, gangster rap was the dominant form of rap. But there were also rap groups, such as Boogie Down Productions, who pointed out the consequences of gangster violence. These groups preached about and created music about being more socially responsible. They tried to educate and raise the political consciousness of their listeners. But they also had a tough, aggressive Stagger Lee attitude, as evidenced by the name of one of the best of these groups--Public Enemy--and by the titles of two of their albums--It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and Fear of a Black Planet.
Rap music signaled that black America still had a long way to go, especially in escaping from the ghetto. And, of course, that meant that white America still had a long way to go to. The civil rights victories of the 1950s and 1960s did not bring relief to the people living lives of desperation in the worst parts of the big city. The ghettos just kept getting worse. The cards were still stacked against inner city African-Americans, and--still to a large degree in at least some cities, if not all--so was the American system of justice and law enforcement. Out of frustration and anger, Public Enemy recorded the song "911 Is a Joke" and west coast rapper Ice-T wrote the song "Cop Killer" in which he fantasized about "dusting off" some policemen. Ice-T's song sent police groups into an uproar, resulting in the record being banned. "Cop Killer" had a chilling message, but people with open minds can understand how a song like that could be written out of anger, especially considering that Ice-T was from Los Angeles, a city whose police force included Mark Fuhrman and the officers who perpetrated the Rodney King beating.
As rap was emerging during the 1980s, proponents of the Reagan-era backlash against civil rights claimed that all that was necessary for black people to improve on their lot in life was for them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. But in his book The Ice Opinion, Ice-T gives a different point of view, the viewpoint of someone who has actually lived the ghetto life. He explains how kids living in the ghetto are so easily swept up into a life of crime. In particular, he points out how in his Los Angeles neighborhood, he saw the police department and system of law literally forcing kids into the wrong side of the legal system. It is probably impossible for a white person to understand just how big a trap the ghetto is, but Ice-T's book is a real eye-opener. It makes it clear that for a kid to have a chance of surviving and escaping from the ghetto's world of violence, drugs, and crime, he would have to be strong, gifted, and very, very, very lucky. And that still would only give him an outside chance. Survival is the name of the game in the ghetto. Getting out is not about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps; it's about walking through the fires of hell and managing somehow not to be consumed by the flames. It means doing battle with the devil and somehow coming out on top. That is why Stagger Lee is back. Because he is the only one who is ba-a-a-a-d enough to do it. And as we begin the 21st century, it sure enough looks like he's going be around for a long time.
Note 1:
Mouse, a character found in Mosley's Easy Rawlins mystery series, is an outstanding modern day incarnation of Stagger Lee. In the movie based on Mosley's book Devil in a Blue Dress (starring Denzel Washington as Easy Rawlins), Don Cheadle gives a particularly chilling performance as Mouse. Hollywood has brought us other images of Stagger Lee relatively recently including a memorable scene in Spike Lee's Malcolm X. It takes place in Malcolm's younger days. Decked out in a colorful zoot suit, he and another man accidentally bump into each other in a night club. The man insults Malcolm and then takes Malcolm's wide-brimmed hat from his head and tosses it on the floor. Malcolm responds by breaking a bottle over the man's head knocking him to the floor. In Stagolee: From Shack Bully to Culture Hero, Cecil Brown points out that Spike Lee may have shot this scene with the myth of Stagger Lee in mind. (Incidentally, if you take Spike Lee's given name, Shelton Lee, and reverse the positions of the first and last names, you get the name Lee Shelton. And Lee Shelton just happens to be the name of the man known as "Stag" Lee who killed William Lyons in St. Louis and who may be the historical figure who inspired the Stagger Lee legend.) (end of Note 1)
Note 2:
In addition to Stagger Lee, the stories of many other African-American folk figures contain the theme of survival. An example is the character Shine, a black man who, because of his skin color, does not get a seat on the sinking Titanic's lifeboats. To save himself, he jumps into the icy water and swims to safety. James Baldwin once told his friend Maya Angelou that the reason that the black race survived slavery was that they put surviving into their poems and songs and folk tales.
Note 3:
A forerunner of gangster rap was rude-boy music, a music from Jamaica which was popular during the mid-1960s. It included records which either glorified or condemned the violent criminal lifestyle of the ghetto youth of the island. The rudies idolized rough, tough, and violent outlaws as can be seen in song titles such as "I'm the Toughest", "Tougher than Tough", and "Johnny Too Bad". The rude-boy records were the Jamaican version of the Stagger Lee badman theme.