Singer-songwriter Lloyd Price dies at 88 in New York

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 would often speak of the racial injustices he endured, calling his memoir “sumdumhonkey” and writing on his Facebook page during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests that behind his “affable exterior” was “a man who is seething.” Born in Kenner, Louisiana, one of 11 siblings, Price had been singing in church and playing piano since childhood. He was in his late teens when a local DJ’s favorite catchphrase, “Lawdy Miss Clawdy,” helped inspire him to write his boundary-breaking first hit, which he worked on in his mother’s fried fish restaurant. “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 in 2013.