Tag Archive for '1950s'

Bo Diddley, RIP

Published
by
sean
on June 2, 2008
in filler
. 0 Comments

Bo Diddley, a Rock ’n’ Roll Pioneer, Is Dead at 79

Bo Diddley, a singer and guitarist who invented his own name, his own guitars, his own beat and, with a handful of other musical pioneers, rock ’n’ roll itself, died Monday at his home in Archer, Fla. He was 79.The cause was heart failure, a spokeswoman, Susan Clary, said. Mr. Diddley had a heart attack last August, only months after suffering a stroke while touring in Iowa.In the 1950s, as a founder of rock ’n’ roll, Mr. Diddley — along with Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and a few others — helped reshape the sound of popular music worldwide, building it on the templates of blues, Southern gospel, R&B and postwar black American vernacular culture.

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Mr. Diddley said he had first heard the “Bo Diddley beat” — bomp ba-bomp bomp, bomp bomp — in a church in Chicago. But variations of it were in the air. The children’s game hambone used a similar rhythm, and so did the ditty “Shave and a haircut, two bits.”

The beat is also related to the Afro-Cuban clave, which had been popularized at the time by the New Orleans mambo carnival song “Jockomo,” recorded by Sugar Boy Crawford in 1953.

Whatever the source, Mr. Diddley felt the beat’s power. In early songs like “Pretty Thing” and “Bo Diddley,” he arranged the rhythm for tom-toms, guitar, maracas and voice, with no cymbals and no bass. (Also arranged in his signature rhythm was the eerie “Mona,” a song of praise he wrote for a 45-year-old exotic dancer who worked at the Flame Show Bar in Detroit; this song became the template for Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away.”)

I’m partial to “Sixteen Tons” myself, though “Bo Diddly” and its signature beat are certainly a more important part of Bo Diddley’s legacy.  Early in his career, Bo Diddley appeared on The Ed Sullivan show, and was instructed by Sullivan to play “Sixteen Tons.”  Without any warning, he played “Bo Diddley”  instead.  Sullivan was furious, telling Diddley he’d never appear on television again.  Indeed, Diddley didn’t appear again on broadcast television for 10 years.  That performance is available on for viewing here (if you can bear the host site’s eye scalding design).