A song called "Stack-a-Lee" was first mentioned in 1897, in the "Kansas City Leavenworth Herald", as being performed by "Prof. Charlie Lee, the piano thumper". The earliest versions were likely field hollers and other work songs performed by African-American laborers, and were well known along the lower Mississippi River by 1910. That year, musicologist John Lomax received a partial transcription of the song, and in 1911, two versions were published in the "Journal of American Folklore" by the sociologist and historian Howard W. Odum.