Stagolee shot Billy

Description:

"This story was never meant to by sandwiched between the covers of a book, as neat lines of prose. In 1895 a man called "Stag" Lee Shelton shot a man called Billy Lyons in a St. Louis bar. A black-on-black crime that scarcely made headlines. But this story, turned into a song, is one that black Americans have never tired of repeating and reliving. This tale of dignity and death, violence and sex, has been given countless forms by artists ranging from Ma Rainey to the Clash." "Billy died because he touched another man's five-dollar Stetson. Or was it because he cheated at a card game? Or was it because the antagonists straddled the great American fault line of race at the time the earth was shifting - at the time a strange, almost conspiratorial war was raging in St. Louis between traditional black Republicans and a renegade faction aligned with the traditionally racist Democratic party? A small portion of this story has been told again and again, generation after generation, but few, till now have known what the whole story was." "Novelist and scholar Cecil Brown explores this legend from what was in those days the second city of America, gateway between East and West and North and South: St. Louis. Though bits of actual history have been associated with the song, the true story - told in its entirety for the first time in this book - is more complex, more deeply rooted, than anything anyone would ever dare to invent. It tells of the first generation of free black men, crushed by a Genteel America that was both black and white. It tells of the wild place this country was in the nineteenth century - so wild that the inhabitants of the twentieth century could take it only in small doses and needed to forget. Now it can be told in full."--BOOK JACKET.

subjects: African American criminals,  African American men,  African American men in literature,  African Americans,  English Ballads,  Folklore,  History and criticism,  Literature and folklore,  Songs and music,  Stagolee (Legendary character),  Music,  Folklore, united states,  African americans, music, history and criticism,  African americans, folklore,  Ballads, american, history and criticism,  New York Times reviewed

Places: Saint Louis (Mo.),  United States