Mention Bo Diddley to just about anybody, and they’ll break into that trademark, shuffling pattern that will forever be known as the Bo Diddley beat. It’s no small achievement to have rock ’n’ roll’s most recognizable rhythm named after you.
There was, of course, more to Bo Diddley than that one rhythm. Some of his most famous songs (such as “Crackin’ Up,” covered by the Rolling Stones) didn’t even use it. Another of his early hits, “Say Man,” has a fair claim as the first rap record.
But Diddley probably wouldn’t mind being remembered for a beat that’s known worldwide. Maybe in the afterlife, he’ll finally get paid for it.
Of all rock’s founding greats, Diddley was by far the most accessible: He was playing club gigs until a stroke took him off the road in May 2007. Like Chuck Berry, he often hooked up with available local bands and played with little rehearsal. But unlike Berry, he seldom walked through shows and seemed in his natural element onstage. True, Diddley gigged so hard in part because he needed to. He made it no secret that he never received a dime for his landmark Chess Records. And at his last local appearance at the Reggattabar in February 2007, he asked an overly eager photographer if he could have a cut of the profits.
Diddley penned a handful of rock classics - “Who Do You Love,” “I’m a Man” and his signature tune “Bo Diddley” among them - and he was a good enough guitarist to face off with Chuck Berry on a mid-’60s instrumental album. He was also one of rock’s genuine characters, and his music was all the better for it. The voodoo imagery in “Who Do You Love” went well outside the margins. And not many rock founders wrote about nurses who supplied good drugs during a hospital stay: Diddley pulled off that coup in the mid-’60s, though it took the New York Dolls to turn “Pills” into an underground classic. While out of the spotlight in the early ’70s, Diddley made a string of funk albums that stand with the genre’s wildest.
Diddley’s fans knew and loved his eccentric streak. I got a taste of it in 2001 when he gave a lecture/interview at the Museum of Fine Arts’ Art of the Guitar show. The presenters clearly hoped Diddley would act like a revered elder statesman and share old rock stories. Instead he went off at length about anything that came to mind until someone finally asked if he’d play “Bo Diddley,” which he did until the organizers all but pulled the plug. He livened up that night and gave the museum more rock ’n’ roll than it had bargained for.
