Bo Diddley was born in 1928, the son of sharecroppers. In 1979, he opened for the freakin’ Clash on their American tour. A lot of shit happened in between and it’s the story of the 20th century! Diddley had a mechanical mind and he built what he wanted to use, pushing technology forward into new arenas. If something didn’t produce the sound he wanted, then he would build whatever it was so he could get the right sound. He built his guitar. Which we saw on display at the Met. Instantly recognizable as his.
He built one of the first tremolo systems – out of old junk he found – literally scraps. Because of this, he sounded like nobody else. What he was doing was un-replicatable with the technology of the time. He stood out. And his sound still stands out. You’d never mistake his sound for anyone else’s.
I really appreciate Andrew Hickey’s 500 Songs podcast and his observation that the Everly Brothers took much of their guitar playing styles from Diddley. This obviously isn’t just HIS observation, but it’s where I first heard it. Diddley’s influence is hard to measure: he’s everywhere. Not too many people born in 1928 were touring with the Clash 50 years later. But I love the Everly Brothers and hadn’t clocked the “nod”, even though I should have, and now feel a little silly because it’s so obvious. There’s a heavy chug-a-chug sound in Diddley’s guitar, a choppy-chunking sound – repetitive, but it works beCAUSE it’s repetitive. This is the same sound the Everly brothers made. Diddley’s sound is so distinct it’s named for him – “the Bo Diddley beat.” Once you hear it, you can’t un-hear it. Found a great piece about the Bo Diddley Beat.
Diddley loved all music, gospel, country, rhythm and blues. You can hear the mix in all of his stuff. But he also wove in African folklore, Black American folklore/myths, vaudeville, inherited jokes … he brought it all into play. Like in “Say Man”. (You can hear his influence on Johnny Cash!)
His first hit was called …. “Bo Diddley”. (There are varying stories of how Elias Bates got his stage name. One intriguing theory is he named himself after Beau Diddley, a character in a Zora Neale Hurston story.) It’s the birth of the “Bo Diddley Beat”. He was signed to Chess records, so there was a lot of power and influence behind him. “Bo Diddley” was a hit. It still sounds like a hit. He performed it on the Ed Sullivan Show.
There’s a famous story about a confrontation Ed Sullivan and Diddley had backstage, when there was (understandable) confusion about what Diddley was going to perform on the show. The instructions were unclear. Diddley thought they wanted one thing, Sullivan and producers wanted another, and so when Diddley did his thing, it appeared to Sullivan et al as though he were going rogue. The confrontation was heated, and Diddley paid a price. Word got around. That clip is all we have of early Diddley. Chess got a little scared, and put their weight behind other performers … people who, presumably, wouldn’t scream at Ed Sullivan. It’s not fair. He was confused. I’d have been confused too. You tell me one thing, I assume what you mean, I follow your orders, and now you get pissed and say “that’s not what we meant”? Not fair.
His next hit was a monster – to this day – “I’m a Man”. The song was written in response to Muddy Waters’ “Hoochie Coochie Man”, a great record:
Diddley used a lot of the conceits, you can hear it in the lyrics, but musically he pared it down (and Waters’ was already pared down). Diddley got rid of as many chords as he could. It’s stripped bare. It’s just those main chords, the blues chord changes, over and over and over … and it has this tense feeling of inevitability, a power that builds and builds … There isn’t much to it. There doesn’t NEED to be “more to it”. Because LISTEN to this beast.
“I’m a Man” spawned a whole cottage industry of covers and responses. The song is a challenge (or, you can look at it as a challenge). Diddley declaring “I’m a man. M. A. N.” brought on reactions like, “Oh yeah? I’M the man.” The song was covered countless times and it’s one of the classic blues tracks – and that opening da-DA-duh-dum (chug- chug- chug) da-DA-duh-dum (chug chug chug) is sampled in more movies than I can even count. (In Paul Schrader’s great Blue Collar, the startling opening credits sequence is a work of art in and of itself, with shots of the factory work and workers – freeze framed – all timed to the opening song, Captain Beefhearts “Hard Workin’ Man,” where some of the accompaniment is the actual clanking of the machinery. The song is almost an exact duplication of “I’m a Man” – they didn’t want to pay Diddley for the rights. But you hear this, and you know the origin without even being told the story.
A lot of Diddley’s peers either died in obscurity or faded out, derailed by poverty or alcoholism or drugs. He was 10 years older than the rockabilly class, and his innovations inspired everyone. The British invasion couldn’t have happened without Diddley. Any little kid who wanted to be a guitarist in the 50s heard Diddley and tried to duplicate the sounds he was making. They failed. How is he doing that?? they agonized.
Well, he built his guitar to fit out of cigar boxes and wood. He built his own sound system. He cared about what he put out there, he cared about whatever he did: a song had HIS name on it. He was not an obedient employee. He was a mechanic and a seer. For him, it would be about the sound. It was always about the sound.
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