It’s obvious in The Rolling Stones breakthrough single Not Fade Away, and you can hear it in 80s classics like I Want Candy and Faith. It’s the distinctive “Bo Diddley beat”. When its namesake died recently, rock n roll lost a true innovator. While Bo Diddley may not be as famous as the many artists who have copied his songs, his place in the rock n roll pantheon is secure thanks to his distinctive and influential style.
Born Ellas McDaniel, Diddley learnt violin as a child, but was inspired to start playing guitar after hearing John Lee Hooker . All sorts of stories are around about how he acquired his stage name – it was a childhood nickname, someone at the record company named him, he played an instrument known as a diddley bow – whatever the truth, his name gave him his biggest hit. After being picked up by the pioneering Chess Records, Diddley had some early rhythm and blues chart success. Although he became a favourite with the Brit Invasion bands, he never had the mainstream following of his Chess contemporary Chuck Berry. Maybe Diddley was just a little too weird for the masses. He used distortion and played a funny looking guitar (incidentally Gretsch later reproduced his guitar for the public).
Diddley did get some recognition later in life, though. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, and Rolling Stone named him number 20 in their 100 Greatest Artists of All Time (read the Iggy Pop penned entry here). However he often complained that he never saw the financial rewards.
Read Bo Diddley’s obituary from The Guardian, and I also recommend checking out The Record Men : the Chess brothers and the birth of rock & roll for an insight into the early days of the recording industry.
17 June 2008 at 11:10 pm
Bo Dead? Sad to hear. My intro to the man was on an early Animals LP where they covered ‘the story of Bo Diddley’ including a portion where Eric Burdon mentions Bo Diddley seeing them playing his song and (from memory) after describing how the Duchess and Jerome Green (‘The bar man, show me to the bar’) react, the climactic point of the song is ‘he loooked at me, he looked at me with half-closed eyes and a smaile on his face and he said… that sure is the biggest load of rubbish I ever did hear..’ Another experience before hearing any actual BD was reading in the then feee Rip it up about the Troggs’ bass player ’struggling manfully’ with a five minute version of Mona, some reader then wrote in to say it was ripped off of the Who’s ‘Magic Bus’ and an editorial note to say that as the song was credit to E McDaniels the chance was that the Who may have got there second. Tips of the hat also go to the ‘Bo Dudley’ sketch with P Cook & D Moore, and also the aerobics position, the Diddley squat.
Nice peice of writing by Iggy as well.