With his thick, black-rimmed glasses, vibrant red and black plaid jacket and custom made Gretsch guitar with its rectangle shape, Bo Diddley cut a striking presence, as did what he called his “freight train sound”, a combination of distorted, frenetic rhythm guitar playing and ferocious maraca shaking, the latter thanks to his musical partner, Jerome Green.
Not the most prolific artist, preferring to concentrate on live performance he, nevertheless, released 24 studio albums, six live albums and 37 singles in his lifetime, most of which were recorded for the Chess label with whom he found success from the off with his 1955 debut single, the self mythologising Bo Diddley backed with I’m A Man. It landed him a US R&B number 2 hit and its influence is incommensurable.
Along with a string of future classics including Diddley Daddy, Who Do You Love?, Roadrunner and Say Man, it not only aided the smooth passage of blues and R&B to rock’n’roll, but also gave rise to the 60s British beat boom. The Pretty Things named themselves after Bo’s song of a similar name; the Rolling Stones, Manfred Mann, The Kinks, The Animals and The Yardbirds all covered his material.
Born Otha Ellas Bates in McComb, Mississippi in 1928, Bo Diddley moved to Chicago, started playing violin as a boy in the Baptist church, then took up the guitar and plied his trade in The Hipsters and the Langley Avenue Jive Cats on the city’s street corners. As a soloist, he graduated from blues clubs to New York’s Carnegie Hall, playing there in 1955.
In 1957 he wrote Love Is Strange, a US hit for Mickey & Sylvia; in 1967 and ’68 with Muddy Waters, he recorded Super Blues and The Super Super Blues Band. 1966’s Ooh Baby provided his last hit single. His final album, 1996’s A Man Amongst Men, featuring Ron Wood and Keith Richards, made the US Top 10 Blues Chart.
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