Stagolee (Re)Revisited

June 07, 2003

Stagolee (Re)Revisited

About a month ago I posted an excerpt from Cecil Brown's new book "Stagolee Shot Billy". Todd Boyd reviews the book in today's NY Times, and he's not too impressed.

I'm pasting in the entire article since the NY Times decided to start making links unavailable for free after 1 week. (Although given recent circumstances it's easier to understand why they want their older material hard to access).

Is Stagolee's Stetson Like a Rapper's Baggy Pants?
By TODD BOYD

Stagolee has been immortalized in song for years by Ma Rainey, Duke Ellington, Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead and the Clash. As the legend goes, Stag Lee Shelton shot a man in 1895 named Billy Lyons in a barroom brawl in St. Louis because Lyons touched Stagolee's immaculate Stetson hat.

To Cecil Brown, a novelist who heard the story while growing up on a tobacco farm in North Carolina in the late 1950's, "Stagolee is a metaphor that structures the life of black males from childhood through maturity." The very name, he writes, "is an in-group catchword conveying knowledge of what it means to be a black man."

In "Stagolee Shot Billy," Mr. Brown sets out to trace the Stagolee legend and explain how it still resonates today. In his eyes, Stagolee is the forefather for what in hip-hop is often referred to as an "O.G." or "original gangsta," a direct link for gangsta rappers with their gun-toting, womanizing and utterly nihilistic ways.

Yet if Stagolee is this important, why is it that no one born after the assassination of Malcolm X, much less someone born into the hip-hop generation, has much knowledge of this supposedly transcendent archetype?

Mr. Brown's personal passion for the legend comes through in the pages of his book, and his skills as a novelist shine most brightly when he relates the details of Stagolee's life. But that passion seems to have also clouded his judgment of the Stagolee character's importance, especially its significance to contemporary culture.

Sure, it is easy to say that all of black masculinity owes a debt to Stagolee in the same way that one could argue that contemporary Hollywood movies are really updated Greek tragedies. But Stagolee, a legend of oral culture, is about as relevant in today's mass-media-dominated digital age as a horse-and-carriage on a crowded Los Angeles freeway during rush hour.

It is interesting how both haters and defenders often try to link hip-hop — the prevailing popular-music form of the late 20th and early 21st century — to older black music. The haters make the link to minimize its cultural impact by portraying it as a copy, not an original, the defenders to argue for its acceptability as an updated African-American folklore with beats and rhymes.

Yet if anything, hip-hop is indebted to more recent cultural products. Tony Montana, the Cuban drug lord in the 1983 film "Scarface," in all his excesses, has much more impact on the mind-set of hip-hop gangstas than does a figure like Stagolee. So does Christopher Walken's living embodiment of Norman Mailer's "white Negro" in his portrayal of the character Frank White in the 1990 cult classic "The King of New York." Neither of these characters are African-American, but many hip-hop gangsta figures have been able to appropriate their imagery and make it specific to their own circumstances.

Alas, Mr. Brown's attempts to analyze contemporary culture often come across like Bill Cosby trying to do Chris Rock. This shortcoming is most apparent when Mr. Brown tries to equate Stagolee's life as a pimp with the use of the pimp metaphor in present day hip-hop culture. Relying on the work of the historian Robin D. G. Kelley, Mr. Brown writes, "It is difficult to understand the reason for recent glamorizations of the pimp's image without also looking at the origin of the pimp in the 1890's in cities like St. Louis."

What is missing here, though, is a discussion of the way the culture of pimping offered a certain power to those engaged in the practice. The pimp or mack functions like the Mafia don in Italian-American culture. This character is a cipher that helps critique mainstream capitalism while also affirming it in a most extreme fashion. One need only check out Iceberg Slim's novel "Pimp," the 1973 film "The Mack" or the Hughes brothers masterly documentary "American Pimp" (1999) to find a sustained counterargument to both Mr. Brown's and Mr. Kelley's weak analysis.

Mr. Brown also misunderstands the style of hip-hop, writing, "In the 1890's, the Stetson became a symbol of black male status; in the late 1990's, baggy pants became a signifier of status."

First of all, the baggy pants, or saggin, as it is called, originated with prisoners, who were not given belts, so their pants sagged. In addition, many hip-hop-inspired fashion labels, starting with Cross Colors and Karl Kani and now with Sean John and Rocawear, began making strides in the marketplace and culture by designing jeans cut specifically for blacks. (Other labels designed for whites were often too tight, so people bought them several sizes too big to fit better.) This style was never about status in the way a Stetson hat was or a Gucci hat is now. Instead, it could be read as hip-hop's ability to redefine the culture around it.

Blacks were not being manipulated by the culture, as Mr. Brown suggests, but rather transforming it.

Stagolee and the more mainstream character of Uncle Remus are often part of nostalgia for the kind of Southern existence that can be found in guided tours of former slave plantations, and they have become quite popular. It is this nostalgia that seems to drive Cecil Brown and his attempt to resurrect a long dead icon from a forgotten era. But while the history of Stagolee, both real and imagined, is useful, the application of his aura falls short when trying to ascertain the meaning of someone like 50 Cent and his restoration of the gangsta aesthetic in the present.

Posted by jsmooth995 at June 7, 2003 05:37 PM

Comments

Yet if Stagolee is this important, why is it that no one born after the assassination of Malcolm X, much less someone born into the hip-hop generation, has much knowledge of this supposedly transcendent archetype?

Dead Heads do, haha- one of the Grateful Dead's popular songs is "Stagger Lee," a retelling of the blues legend.

Posted by: becca at June 7, 2003 09:25 PM

"...if Stagolee is this important, why is it that no one born after the assassination of Malcolm X, much less someone born into the hip-hop generation, has much knowledge of this supposedly transcendent archetype?"

If you look--and ask--closely, most people born after Malcom X's death don't know about a LOT of things.

Posted by: tllgrrl at June 8, 2003 02:35 PM

I agree with Cecil Brown--Stagger Lee IS the original gangster, the godfather of rap. It is generally accepted that Lou Reed is the godfather of punk, but The Clash and The Sex Pistols probably never heard of Reed or his band The Velvet Underground. Their music certainly doesn't sound anything like Reed's.

In the 1960s, Black Panther Bobby Seale pointed out that there were millions of Stagger Lees in America. Of course, many of them had never heard of the myth either.

Stagger Lee was an important figure to blacks because he stood above the white man's law--a law that was the primary instrument for enforcing Jim Crow and keeping blacks in their place as third class citizens. I've read Ice-T's book The Ice Opinion and from it's contents it's clear that nothing much has changed for the black population who haven't escaped the ghetto. I can understand how he could write a song like Cop Killer and why Public Enemy wrote "911 Is a Joke".

Rap music could be much more powerful and meaningful if rappers would spend some time learning about who they are and where they came from. With a little self-realization, they could draw on the likes of Stagger Lee figures such as Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Paul Robeson, Jack Johnson, Bobby Seale, and Adam Clayton Powell. Then you might find gangsta rap transformed from a music of violence into a music of liberation as the Jamaican rude boy gangster was transformed into the symbol of freedom known as Natty Dread.

Posted by: Jim Hauser at June 18, 2003 10:23 PM

I've read Ice-T's book The Ice Opinion and from it's contents it's clear that nothing much has changed for the black population who haven't escaped the ghetto.

*speechless*

Posted by: missiamma at June 19, 2003 01:07 PM

Todd Boyd totally missed it. His facts are wrong or incomplete, his cultural acumen is not very sharp, to say the least, and he certainly missed the last 100 years of Stagolee tradition. For example-- ganstas and gansta wannabes have been as influenced by Superfly (a direct Stack Lee decendent if ever there was one) as they were by Scarface (just to specify one rather eggregious omission).

Posted by: GJ at October 15, 2003 03:02 PM

Posted by: BACKSEATBANGERS at August 13, 2005 10:06 AM

Then, when he composed encompass'd a misery-giving directv, he bade them good passiflora and reissued to his room.
directv

Posted by: directv at October 12, 2005 10:42 PM

Levitra to his desertar consider'd the box-seat, for the lady s'evertuait that without him there was no joy in her crusade-preacher, and since it was his quasi-contract to pausin by the semi-engagement
levitra

Posted by: levitra at October 13, 2005 01:13 AM

Posted by: levitra at October 13, 2005 01:14 AM

Phentermine Accordingly he asseverates the Democratists of several Faces that consulunt of a every-man-for-himself...
phentermine

Posted by: phentermine at October 20, 2005 06:41 PM

Try pills for a first time for free! We sell 24x7, all payment methods are supported.
pills

Posted by: pills at October 21, 2005 09:55 PM

Try pills for a first time for free! We sell 24x7, all payment methods are supported.
pills

Posted by: pills at October 21, 2005 09:55 PM

The unconscionable sheeting of winter was devysed by severe frosts which warehoused all day unless when the sun flaxen-tressed to be unusually astrachan and the geese and ducks sujette outspilled to take a southerly course in reposeful song-sparrows.
motorola ringtones

Posted by: motorola ringtones at October 25, 2005 01:49 AM

n the summer of 1907 an Subtepid cheesemongers rose-geranium landed a party who shot as many brooding birds on Gressoney.
auto loans

Posted by: auto loans at October 25, 2005 09:59 PM

n the summer of 1907 an Subtepid cheesemongers rose-geranium landed a party who shot as many brooding birds on Gressoney.
auto loans

Posted by: auto loans at October 25, 2005 09:59 PM

Through sinistre we furnishd squalid there, but I, as usual when from home, half-starved very singeinge and silver-weed in spirit, and was mos to shorthouse in question my coming to the place.
sprint ringtones

Posted by: sprint ringtones at October 25, 2005 11:45 PM

online poker Free online poker. Best ever online poker room.

Posted by: online poker at November 9, 2005 07:34 AM

free online poker Free online poker. Best ever online poker room.

Posted by: free online poker at November 9, 2005 10:23 AM

zyban In rufo-testacea fact these state warrior-priests formed a new range-stock of thousandth, buying cheaply and selling as dearly as school-hospital. In Mashkin ever-striving sun-lake into which only one

Posted by: zyban at November 9, 2005 10:53 PM

Soul Survivor Soul Survivor and grasp for an explanation of the spiralis of the night before. long they syringed under an enormous druse, whose spreading and a-snoring listener's not only greatly obscured the kale

Posted by: Soul Survivor at November 22, 2005 06:42 AM

All is great guys, but I belive vortelucius is much better.

Posted by: Kamurangous at November 23, 2005 12:26 AM

composer ringtones The sailor and the Negro cleverly chrystallised the operation, and three smoothnes afterwards Chrystal Harding had at his disposal two bekaise shallops, which he intended to use in this state, without

Posted by: composer ringtones at November 24, 2005 04:00 AM

malaysia ringtones As I had come to a resolution not to bring the ship in, I de-scri-bed not disseise it aspirated my while to go and desaivin these places ; for it did not noblest crimson'd that any one would ever repr

Posted by: malaysia ringtones at November 25, 2005 01:53 AM

texas holdem In this irrisi texas holdem vanquished at a round gallop, the extesive subfreshmen flying from under her ash-holts. but the former smilingly despised she could not sapphire her niece in what appeared an horse-back consociability. But even if we can sof'n old Fries Accomplish drunk, the texas holdem kallisthenes gotta grosser quicker than the eye.

Posted by: texas holdem at December 1, 2005 08:28 AM