Early rock influencer wrote ‘Stagger Lee’
Singer-songwriter Lloyd Price, an early rock ’n roll star and enduring maverick whose hits included such up-tempo favorites as “Lawdy Miss Clawdy,” “Personality” and the semi-forbidden “Stagger Lee,” has died. He was 88.
Price died Monday in New Rochelle, New York, of complications from diabetes, his wife, Jacqueline Price, said Saturday.
Price, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998, was among the last survivors of a post-World War II scene in New Orleans that anticipated the shifts in popular music and culture leading to the rise of rock in the mid-1950s. Along with Fats Domino and David Bartholomew, among others, Price fashioned a deep, exuberant sound around the brass and swing of New Orleans jazz and blues that placed high on R&B charts and eventually crossed over to white audiences.
Price’s nickname was “Mr. Personality,” fitting for a performer with a warm smile and a tenor voice to match. But he was far more than an engaging entertainer. He was unusually independent for his time, running his own record label, holding on to his publishing rights and serving as his own agent. He would often speak of the racial injustices he endured and wrote on his Facebook page during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests that behind his “affable exterior” was “a man who is seething.”
Price was in his late teens when a local DJ’s favorite catchphrase, “Lawdy Miss Clawdy,” helped inspire him to write his first hit.
Featuring Domino’s piano trills, “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” hit No. 1 on the R&B charts in 1952 and became a rock standard. But Price would have mixed feelings about the song’s broad appeal, later remembering how local officials in the Jim Crow South resisted letting both blacks and whites attend his shows.
Price hit the top again with the brassy, poporiented “Stagger Lee.’’ The song was based on a 19th-century fight between two Black men — Lee Shelton, sometimes known as Stag Lee, and Billy Lyons — that ended with Shelton shooting and killing his rival. “Go, Stagger Lee!” a chorus chants throughout.
The song reached No. 1 on the Billboard pop chart early in 1959, but not everyone was entertained. “American Bandstand” host Dick Clark worried the song was too violent for his teen-centered show.
“I had to go make up some lyrics about Stagger Lee and Billy being in some kind of squabble about a girl,” Price told Billboard. “It didn’t make any sense at all. It was ridiculous.”
For a time, Price lived in the same Philadelphia apartment complex as Wilt Chamberlain and Joe Frazier and, along with boxing promoter Don King, helped stage the 1973 “Thrilla in Manila” between Frazier and Muhammad Ali and the 1974 “Rumble in the Jungle” between Ali and George Foreman. He was also a homebuilder, a booking agent, an excellent bowler and the creator of a line of food products.