Tales of Stackalee

Freedom. Destination Freedom. Dramatization of the great democratic traditions of the Negro people is brought to you by Station WMAQ as a part of the pageant of history and of America's own destination freedom. The storytellers say an old city without a legend is like a cow without a cud, and if so the city of Memphis, Tennessee would have plenty to chew on even if the legend of Stackalie

were its only one. In this chapter, Destination Freedom Freedom brings you an account of the mythical fall bunion of the outlaws, around whom grew these tales of Stack-a-lee. Stack-a-lee, you're Stack-a-lee. You know, nobody knows where Stack-a-lee got started.

But I got it straight from folks' song, and lived to tell about it. Boughtellies a tail strain like an alicat from house to house. Fragments flying from lip to lip. J-bird gossip and mockingbird tales from house maves, butlers, gamblers, bartenders and shopies who tie together the shreds and shards of speckley.

And this is the story they tell. Speckley! They see that the night's stack of lee was born. There was a thunderstorm that bounced the earth back and forth like a cue ball on a bigger table.

In a rain fire for fire straight out. In the gambling houses along the muddy Mississippi, all the cards turned to aces. And the dice rolled nothing but seven to announce it's coming. The storm was so terrible that six planets resigned from the solar system and plunged into the Milky Way.

The dead stuck their heads above the graves and held a conference and voted to boycott anybody born on this terrible night, even if it was. Yeah, things were so disarranged that a frantic flea bit relevant and paralyzed him.