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Stagger Lee: The Murder That Became a Song
On Christmas night in 1895, Lee Shelton shot William Lyons inside Bill Curtis’s saloon at Eleventh and Morgan Streets in St. Louis. Within fifteen months, the killing had become a song. Over the next century, “Stagger Lee” was rewritten hundreds of times. The political argument became a dice game. Shelton’s hat became a brand-new Stetson. William Lyons became “Billy,” the man who has to die before the chorus comes back around. In this episode of Where It Happened , we separate the documented case from the folklore. We follow Shelton through two trials and the Missouri State Penitentiary, look at what can and can’t be proven about Lyons, and trace the story from the oldest known lyrics in 1897 to Lloyd Price’s number-one hit in 1959. Content note: Murder, gun violence, racist historical reporting, and incarceration. FACT-CHECK NOTES Location: The shooting occurred in Bill Curtis’s saloon at Eleventh and Morgan. Morgan later became Delmar Boulevard, and this downtown stretch was later renamed Convention Plaza. The saloon’s exact footprint can’t be identified with certainty. Date: Lyons was shot on December 25, 1895, and died several hours later. Records conflict slightly on whether his death was officially recorded as December 25 or early December 26. The argument: The earliest newspaper account says the men had been drinking and that their conversation “drifted to politics.” The familiar dice-game version came later. The hat and gun: The first report says only that Lyons took Shelton’s hat. It does not call it a Stetson. Later review of the coroner’s inquest found testimony identifying Shelton’s revolver as a .44. William Lyons’s family: Lyons’s death certificate listed him as single. Later descendants and archival records connected him to Florence, Leon “Buddy,” and Marie, but the timeline still has gaps. We treat that connection as meaningful evidence, not settled fact. Trials: Shelton’s first trial ended with a hung jury. He was convicted of second-degree murder in October 1897 and sentenced to twenty-five years. Earliest known lyrics: The oldest lyrics currently known appeared in the Kansas City Star on March 14, 1897. The article said Black prisoners in the Kansas City jail were singing “Stacka Lee” and called it an import from St. Louis. Death: Shelton’s sentence was commuted in 1909. He returned to prison after a 1911 robbery conviction. A mercy parole was approved in 1912 because he was dying of tuberculosis, but he died before he could leave. Lloyd Price: His 1958 recording reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 1959 and stayed there for four weeks. Price later said he recorded a nonviolent version for American Bandstand after Dick Clark objected to the murder in the lyrics. SOURCES AND FURTHER READING St. Louis Mercantile Library at UMSL; Eric McHenry’s “The Baddest Man in Town” and “The Annotated ‘Stacka Lee’” in The American Scholar ; Missouri State Archives; Library of Congress National Jukebox; Howard W. Odum’s 1911 research; Cecil Brown’s Stagolee Shot Billy ; National Park Service material on Mississippi John Hurt; PBS NewsHour and Los Angeles Times reporting on Lloyd Price; the Stagger Lee Project recording catalog; and the St. Louis Black Heritage Network for location context. Some older timelines conflict with archival records or predate the discovery of the March 1897 lyrics. Where sources disagreed, we say so rather than presenting a disputed detail as settled fact. Where It Happened tells true stories through the places where they happened. Written and narrated by Jeff Allen.
Introducing Where It Happened
You can pass the same street corner, building, neighborhood, or empty lot for years without knowing what happened there. Where It Happened is a narrative history podcast that uncovers the crimes, conflicts, scandals, and major events connected to real places. Each episode begins with a location and follows the story buried beneath what stands there today. The first episodes will explore stories from St. Louis, with more cities and forgotten places to come. Follow Where It Happened now so you don’t miss the first episode.