So runs Anthology of American Folk Music editor Harry Smith's disarmingly succinct summary of the Stackerlee story, as recorded by coal-miner Frank Hutchison in 1927.
Artists more noteworthy than Hutchison have related the tale of Billy Lyons' murder at the hands of drinking buddy Lee Shelton (Stack Lee, Stagger Lee, Stack O. Lee) but this recording's appearance among the 84 tracks compiled by Smith for his 1952 Folkways Records anthology marks it as one of the earliest and least affected.
In Hutchison's jaunty ''hillbilly'' twang and no-frills guitar-and-harmonica accompaniment we hear the song in its vernacular form and can imagine its passage from bar room to back porch and beyond.
Smith was a musicologist, experimental film-maker, occultist and eccentric fringe-dweller.
His mission to collate forgotten recordings from the period 1927 to 1932 was in part a celebration of pieces from his own extensive collection that he regarded as significant, in part an attempt to tell a bigger story.
By assembling the tracks as he did on six LPs in three two-record sets labelled ''songs'', ''social music'' and ''ballads'', each with an entry in an accompanying booklet detailing its origin and a synopsis of the lyric, Smith was attempting to form a loose historical narrative tracing interweaving lines of old English folk music, religious and spiritual music, and ethnic music.
The compilation was by no means a comprehensive record of American folk music - the Library of Congress archives and earlier field recordings could have added much to the picture.
Instead, it was a music lover's homage to recordings that were made to be purchased, listened to, shared, enjoyed and kept alive.
Smith did his job. His Anthology ignited the American folk music revival of the '50s and '60s, and every Greenwich Village scenester owed him a debt for providing a launching pad for their own journey of discovery.
