Bo Diddley

Bo Diddley's syncopated "hambone" beat — CHINK-a-CHINK-a-CHINK, a-CHINK-CHINK — is a cornerstone of rock & roll songs, from Diddley's own "Who Do You Love," "Mona," "Bo Diddley," and "I'm a Man" to the Who's "Magic Bus," Bruce Springsteen's "She's the One," the Pretenders' "Cuban Slide," the Strangelove's "I Want Candy" (later covered by Bow Wow Wow), and Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away." He was not only one of rock and roll's pioneers but also one of the most influential guitarists of his generation, and his smart, lubricious vocal style has informed blues and rock singers for over a half-century. A long popular live act, Diddley was a fixture on the road for six decades.

Adopted by a Mississippi sharecropping family, Bo Diddley (born Ellas McDaniel) moved with them to the South Side of Chicago. As a child, he began studying violin under Professor O.W. Frederick at the Ebenezer Baptist Church. In grammar school he acquired his Bo Diddley nickname (a "diddley bow" is a one-stringed African guitar). By his teens, when he entered Foster Vocational School (where he learned to make violins and guitars), he had switched to guitar and regularly played on Chicago's Maxwell Street when not in school. (He built his first rectangular guitar at age 15.) After several years of performing on street corners, he played at the 708 Club in 1951 and became a regular South Side performer for the next four years.

In July 1955, Leonard Chess signed Diddley to his Checker label. The artist's first single, "Bo Diddley," was an immediate Number One R&B success. Its B-side, "I'm a Man," (1955) also fared well on the R&B chart; later recorded by the Yardbirds, among many others, it became a blues-rock standard. Diddley's biggest pop success came in 1959, when "Say Man" (Number Three R&B) hit the Top 20 late in the year. He had a lesser pop hit in 1962 with the rollicking "You Can't Judge a Book by Its Cover" (Number 48 pop, Number 21 R&B). He also wrote Mickey & Sylvia's 1956 smash, "Love Is Strange."

Diddley toured steadily through the late-1950s and early-1960s, playing rock package tours and one-nighters at R&B venues. The band that recorded with him in the mid-1950s included drummers Clifton James and Frank Kirkland, pianist Otis Spann, Bo's half-sister "The Duchess" on guitar and vocals, and Diddley's eternal sidekick, bassist and maracas shaker Jerome Green (who also provided call-and-response repartee on "Say Man," "Hey Bo Diddley," and "Bring It to Jerome," among many others).

Diddley's legacy was enhanced considerably during the mid-1960s, when many of his songs were covered by British Invasion groups like the Rolling Stones, the Pretty Things (who named themselves after Diddley's "Pretty Thing"), and the Yardbirds. In 1964, the Animals paid tribute to him in an album track entitled "The Story of Bo Diddley." Through the years, his material has been recorded by countless other artists.

Diddley recorded erratically since the early-1960s. In the mid-1960s he recorded traditional blues with Little Walter and Muddy Waters on Super Blues. In the early-1970s Diddley toured frequently concentrating on Europe. One such outing was documented in the splendid (though hard to find) 1973 concert-and-backstage film Let the Good Times Roll. Around the same time he also appeared in D.A. Pennebaker's Keep on Rockin'. He also spent some time in the mid-1970s as a deputy sheriff in Valencia County, New Mexico, giving the truth to the title of his classic 1960 LP, Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger.

In 1976 RCA released 20th Anniversary of Rock 'n' Roll, a tribute to Diddley that featured over 20 artists. Diddley also opened several dates for the Clash's 1979 U.S. tour. He made cameo appearances in George Thorogood's video "Bad to the Bone" (1982) and played a pawnbroker in the Dan Aykroyd-Eddie Murphy movie Trading Places. In 1998 he appeared in Blues Brothers 2000. He tried recording over electro-funk grooves on 1992's This Should Not Be; critics agreed with the album's title.

Bo Diddley's stature as a founding father of rock & roll is indisputable despite his relative lack of commercial success and he gained a healthy boost with 1990's Chess Box, a handsome double-CD outlining the musician's greatest work. (Shorter best-ofs also abound.) He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. In 1996 he released his first major-label album in two decades, A Man Amongst Men, with guest artists including Ron Wood, Keith Richards, and the Shirelles. That album was nominated for a 1997 Grammy in the Best Contemporary Blues Album category. The following year, he received the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences Lifetime Achievement Award. He was also the recipient of the Rhythm & Blues Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award; the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters' Pioneer in Entertainment Award; and a BMI Icon Award. Diddley enshrined in the Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame and the North Florida Music Association's Hall of Fame, as well. In 2004, Rolling Stone named Diddley the 20th Greatest Artist of All Time. He organized a fundraiser for Ocean Springs, Mississippi, in January 2006, in the wake of damage done by Hurricane Katrina.

Mr. Diddley attributed his long career to abstinence from alcohol and drugs, though later in life he suffered from diabetes. On June 2nd, 2008, at the age of 79, Bo Diddley died of heart failure in his home in Archer, Florida.