Song of the Day 9/17: Bo Diddley, “Bo Diddley”

Guest post by Nathan Arizona

Bo Diddley used to say he was the father of rock ’n’ roll. He had a pretty good case.

He wasn’t the first guy who came out of Chicago to record music that drew on blues and R&B but sounded somehow different. Bo Diddley also brought that beat.

The syncopated Bo Diddley rhythm was not quite like either of its influences but something closer to what became known as blues-rock. It landed him in all the Halls — rock, blues, R&B. He was a particular favorite of young Brits who developed variations as they pioneered their version of blues-rock in the ‘60s.

Fundamentally, the Bo Diddley beat is the old “shave and a haircut, 6 bits.” It had many progenitors, from the “hambone” rhythm played in southern slave quarters to the clava beat at the heart of Latin music.

He also chopped chords to create a distorted tremolo sound on an electric guitar shaped like a rectangle. The guitar sound was probably derived from an African one-string instrument, a crude variation of that among blacks in the old American south and later bottleneck blues guitar.

Here’s what it sounded like on his first hit, “Bo Diddley,” from 1955. This performance is from Ed Sullivan’s popular TV show. Sullivan was open to new black music, but he was surprised to hear a more intense song than the one planned. It got Diddley banned from future shows. The song is a variation of the old “Mockingbird” nursery rhyme later made popular by James Taylor and Carly Simon.

There have been many suggestions about where Diddley (born Ellas Otha Bates) got the name he adopted. You can also call him “Mr. Diddley,” which was New York Times style when it was writing about “Mr. Loaf” and “Mr. Rotten.”

Neighborhood goofballs in Chicago were sometimes called bo diddleys. The name might have come from “diddley squat,” which is what a guy had when he had nothing. That influential single-string instrument of the old south was called a diddley bow.

Bo was not a prolific hitmaker, but he had his share into the mid-‘60s. He knew where the trends were. When westerns became a big deal on TV, there was Mr. Diddley with “Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger.” Of course Bo Diddley was at the OK Corral.

Warren Zevon had some fun covering this song.