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R.I.P BO DIDDLEY
Bo Diddley had most of his success in the music business on the R&B charts in the 50's and early 60's. He had a very strong influence on others who followed. His name at his birth in 1928 in McComb, Mississippi was Otha Ellas Bates McDaniel; he had been adopted by his mother's cousin, Gussie McDaniel, and a man named Bates. The family moved to Chicago when young Ellas was five years old. As a child he studied violin. He taught himself how to play a guitar and played it in a band he joined while in school. He also played the trombone in his church choir. Ellas began a five-year stint as the leader of a three-man washboard band when he was seventeen. He started to record for the Checker and Chess labels in 1955, an association that lasted for 21 years. Most of his hit songs were on the R&B charts: Diddley Daddy, his two-sided hit Bo Diddley/I'm A Man, You Can't Judge A Book By The Cover, Say Man, and Road Runner. His only song to crossover into the pop charts and make the top forty there was Say Man in 1959, a number twenty entry. His popularity as an R&B performer continued strongly until 1962, after which some of his record sales slacked off until he came back with Ooh Baby in 1967. Some of his best work can be found in his more obscure songs from albums that he made in the 50's. Some of these albums had titles such as Bo Diddley and Go Bo Diddley. Included in this group are such songs as Who Do You Love?, Bring It To Jerome, and Diddey Wah Diddey. In addition to singing and performing, he also did some songwriting. His hambone beat [shave-and-a-hair-cut, two bits] was his trademark, and was often copied by others in their music. Although he had few hit songs in the pop vein, his powerful delivery, somewhat intimidating songs, and the pounding rhythm of his guitar caused him to be a performer in demand. He toured with Dick Clark's road shows, and appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. Bo Diddley took his name from a one-stringed African guitar, and usually played a guitar with a rectangular box shape. He managed to work his name into some of his songs. He took his place in the Rock-and-Roll Hall Of Fame in 1987. After months of poor helath, Diddley died of heart failure at his home in Archer, Florida on June 2, 2008. Another legend goes to take his place at the great gig inthe sky, rest well and in peace Bo, it was always a pleasure. Dave
Just a little taste of the great man in action, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgzn7VyoqEw&feature=related
Dave, More info. for you. Scotty from Detroit R.I.P. Bo!!!!!!!!!!!!! BO DIDDLEY1928-2008 Chicago singer-guitarist gave rock 'n' roll its beat in the '50s Bo Diddley, who died Monday at age 79 in Florida, was as essential to the creation of rock 'n' roll as Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley and Little Richard, though he seldom got the credit or the accolades that were showered on his better-known peers. The singer-guitarist, who died of heart failure at his home in Archer, Fla., had been ill since last year, when he suffered a stroke and later a heart attack. Until then, he had spent most of his life on the road, playing rock 'n' roll, the music he loved and helped invent. He was a hardscrabble visionary from the streets of Chicago's South Side who had to fight for everything he got. He created rock 'n' roll's essential rhythm, pioneered an approach to electric guitar playing that was at least a decade ahead of its time, and developed a vocal style and stage persona that influenced everyone from Elvis to Chuck D. Diddley was born Ellas Otha Bates on Dec. 30, 1928, in McComb, Miss. He never knew his father and his mother was a teenager when she gave birth to him; the boy's primary caretaker was his mother's first cousin, Gussie McDaniel. He was renamed Ellas McDaniel and moved with McDaniel to Chicago when he was 7 to escape the sharecropping life. As a child, he was mocked for his country ways and found himself scrapping with grade-school bullies several times a week. By the time he was a teenager, he had become an accomplished boxer, and a boy nobody wanted to mess with. At the same time, the budding pugilist was taking violin lessons at Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church, and later built himself violins and guitars at Foster Vocational High School. These were the first of many custom-made guitars the aspiring musician would wield, and he developed a playing style as distinctive as the box-shaped instruments he made. His large hands made the finger-picking style of country-blues guitarists difficult to master, so he developed a more percussive approach that drew on Afro-Caribbean rhythms and the choppy wrist strokes he adapted from playing the violin. "When I was about 15, I was trying to play like Muddy Waters, but it didn't work," he said in a 1985 interview. "I figured I was on my way to becoming a first-class fool trying to play like Muddy and them. So I invented my own style. I always felt it was better to do your own thing than try to copy someone else, but I had no idea my thing would change rock music." Diddley called his syncopated groove a "freight-train" sound, others described it as a "shave-and-a-haircut" rhythm. The beat had been around for centuries, most notably in West African drumming, but Diddley mastered it and augmented it for the rock 'n' roll era. . When he stepped into Chess Records studio in March 1955 to record for the first time, Diddley and his band were already seasoned entertainers of 11 years with a sound all their own. His songs were filled with tall stories, jokes, insults and good-natured bragging. Diddley portrayed himself as a larger-than-life character, and sang with a mixture of cartoonish joy and hoodoo-man menace. "I'm a man," he declared in one of his more famous songs, and spelled it out slowly, "M-A-N," as if daring anyone to doubt that he was the toughest of them all. "Who do you love?" he growled rhetorically in another signature hit. When he declared his ardor for "Mona," there could be no doubt of his intentions. On stage, he wore horn-rimmed glasses, a black Stetson and a huge smile. He was a master showman whose high-spirited boasts and self-referential songs echoed folk songs, nursery rhymes and childhood games such as the dozens even as they prefigured the rise of hip-hop. He played box-shaped guitars with his teeth and behind his back or swung them suggestively through his legs, while making the amplifiers howl in a way that wouldn't be heard again until '60s innovators such as Buddy Guy and Jimi Hendrix came along. But it was Diddley's feel for rhythm that truly set him apart. The "Bo Diddley beat" was copied by countless artists and underscored many hits. His songs were also covered numerous times, by artists such as the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, the Yardbirds, the Pretty Things, the Doors, the New York Dolls, Springsteen, Aerosmith, Tom Petty and Bob Seger. The Clash invited him to tour with them at the height of the U.K. punk band's fame. Though he had dozens of classic songs, Diddley never approached the level of fame enjoyed by Presley, Little Richard, Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis, among other '50s contemporaries. His sole appearance on the "The Ed Sullivan Show," the prime-time television star-making vehicle, did not go well. Sullivan insisted before the 1955 appearance that Diddley play a Tennessee Ernie Ford hit, "Sixteen Tons." Diddley agreed, but once the cameras rolled he played his signature song, "Bo Diddley." Sullivan was enraged and the singer never appeared on his show again. Diddley avoided the scandal and notorious lifestyle that bedeviled some of his peers, but his hits dried up in the '60s and his career faded in the '70s. He settled in Florida in the '80s, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. In 1998, he received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. He continued to record sporadically and toured frequently on weekends. During the week, he lived quietly in Florida, writing music, repairing vintage cars, and attending church. At home, he was the antithesis of the showboating rock star he played on stage. His neighbors described Diddley as a self-effacing man always ready to help others. "When I first became famous, it really freaked me out," he once said. "I mean, it didn't seem real. I said, 'Wow, I got a hit record! Little ol' me!' I didn't know what to do with it, but then I turned around and faced it. I come from a very religious background, and I figured I was being given a chance and I wasn't about to let it slip by. Maybe that's why I'm still around and others aren't." Diddley is survived by his children, Evelyn Kelly, Ellas A. McDaniel, Tammi D. McDaniel and Terri Lynn McDaniel, as well as 15 grandchildren, 15 great-grandchildren and 3 great-great-grandchildren. Services are planned for this weekend.
I only saw Bo a few times and generally more at the festivals where there would be half dozen or more artists. He always put on a great show, tons of energy, and definitely I think underrated in terms of contributions to rock and influencing stars... His "Who Do You Love" was first introduced to me really by Thorogood's version. It starts getting sad when more and more of artists you have seen have passed away... Some tragically young like SRV, and many like Bo, Ray, John Campbell, etc... who I was just glad to see. RIP BO! Thanks for sharing your music and man... Heaven is getting quite a rocking line-up going on...
With the recent deaths of Porter Wagoner (legendary country singer) and Ray Charles (um, do I need to say anything), Bo Diddley passing is the passing of another aged legend. I know a lot of talk gets put on singers like Hank Williams, Bon Scott, and Ronnie Van Zant (no offense to either of them) for dying young, but it's the ones who die old who help keep it going. About the only song I've heard of his is a cover, Aerosmith's version of Road Runner: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y49UguNvtCQ (songwriter credited to Ellas McDaniel, Bo's real name)
normaly i DONT use foreign links, but in this case i think its ok... 1982 Gig Amsterdam Radio Broadcast Bo Diddley http://www.zshare.net/download/5321909ac44c7b/
Thanks for the link. The great thing about Bo Diddley and other aging artists is you often can catch them again at smaller venues. It is not uncommon to find Buddy Guy, etc playing some places that only hold a few thousand. There is some fairly decent material on youTube. Video quality is not great, but over the last few weeks, I have gone back and watched some Hendrix, Doors, etc.