Bo Diddley: The Rolling Stone Interview

The Forties and early Fifties, when you started out in Chicago, were the years when Muddy Waters was electrifying the Delta blues and playing around town with people like Little Walter. What was that scene like?
I knew 'em all. They used to play the 708 Club all the time. At first, when I was still a teenager, I used to sneak in and hide behind the cigarette machine, and the bouncer would catch me and throw my tail in the streets.

But you'd sneak back in?
Yeah, because I figured, you know, Muddy Waters had somethin' goin', and, man, I was tryin' to find out what it was. Muddy Waters had everything sewed up around Chicago — I mean, sewed up. Big time. I liked what him and Walter was doin'. Walter ... there'll never be another harmonica player like Little Walter. He created something that will live on.

Were these guys nice to you — a young kid sneaking into clubs to catch their sets?
Nope. I'm not gonna lie about it, no. Muddy wasn't an easy guy to learn about, you know? He had his thing, and he didn't associate too much with cats like me.

What about when you made it into the clubs yourself?
No. See, everybody had a little bit of professional jealousy — they felt, like, threatened, you know? They were blues cats; I was a little bit different. So we didn't hang together, 'cause if you played some other kind of music, you didn't hang with the blues dudes, you know? Because you didn't have anything in common. Anybody came along doin' something' new was almost like a threat. But in reality, it wasn't a threat. It was just a new dude came along with something — this is the way you keep the bandwagon rolling, you know? So they thought I was the weird one. But I was the one that nobody wanted to go onstage behind. They'd say, "Man, I don't want to follow you." I'd say, "Well, bring your fire extinguisher onstage with you, 'cause I'm gonna set that sucker on fire. You put it out."

When did you come up with the Bo Diddley beat?
Oh, in 1952, 1953, something like that. It was just something that I put together. Everybody tried to give me this bullshit that "Bo Diddley" is public domain. They tried to say it was "Hambone" — "Hambone, Hambone, have you heard/Papa gonna buy me a mockin' bird." But "Bo Diddley" ain't that. And they say you can't copyright a beat. But "Bo Diddley" is not just a beat; it's a melody and a rhythm pattern. The same as "Harlem Nocturne" or anything else. So what is this bullshit everybody tries to tell me?

How did you hook up with Chess Records in 1955?
I went to Vee Jay first, with this song I had, "Uncle John." Vee Jay was across the street from Chess. And they didn't like the song. They said it didn't sound right — said it was "jungle music." So one day I was breakin' bottles in the alley over there, and this cat opened a door and was throwin' old broke records out the back. And I says, "Is there a record company up in here?" He says, "Yeah — Chess Records."

So you were ushered in to see the Chess brothers?
I wasn't ushered. I walked in there. I said, "Man, you all make records in here?" And Phil was there, he said, "Yeah, whatta you want?" I said, "Well, I got a song." He said, "Let us hear it." And when I started playin', Phil called his brother Leonard in and said, "Listen to this."

Did they take you right into the studio to record it?
Uh-uh. They told me to rewrite it. The words was a little rough. It had lyrics like "Bowlegged rooster told a cocklegged duck/Say, you ain't good-lookin', but you sure can... crow." The old folks didn't understand that. It took me about seven days to rewrite it, and that song became "Bo Diddley."

What about the flip side of that record, "I'm a Man"?
That took about thirty takes. Because they wanted me to spell man. We'd get to that spot in the song, and they'd say, "Okay, now spell it — m-a-n." Real quick, like that — you know how some white guys is out of time? They couldn't tell me exactly what the hell they were talkin' about. So I said it the way they had: "M-a-n." They said, "Goddamn, just spell it." This went on all night. Finally, I was getting tired, and I said it real slow: "M...a...n." And they said, "That's what we're talkin' about!" I said, "Why in the hell didn't you coulda told me that the first?" That's the truth, I ain't lyin'.

"Bo Diddley" went Top Five on the R&B charts and got you onto Ed Sullivan's TV show — where I gather Sullivan wanted you to sing "Sixteen Tons," a big Tennessee Ernie Ford hit that you were performing onstage at the time, and you refused.
Ed Sullivan did everything in his power to shut Bo Diddley down, because he claimed that I double-crossed him on that song. What happened was, they had my name written on a piece of paper; my name is Bo Diddley, and I had a song called "Bo Diddley." He heard me singin' "Sixteen Tons" and wanted me to sing it on the show. So I thought I was supposed to do two tunes. I went out there and sang "Bo Diddley" first — that's what I was there for, y'understand? — and he got mad. He says to me, "You're the first colored boy ever double-crossed me on a song," or a show, or somethin' like this. And I started to hit the dude, because I was a young hoodlum out of Chicago, and I thought "colored boy" was an insult. My manager at the time grabbed me and said, "That's Mr.Sullivan." I said, "Who is that?" I didn't know who the hell he was, man. Shoot.

When I did the Ed Sullivan show, they gave me a check for 750 bucks. CBS cat say, "You gotta sign it, but you gotta give me the check back. This is a formality." I says, "Uh... Formality — who's that?" He says, "We get you on the show, but you gotta kick the check back." I said, "What kind of crap is this?" I done signed my name to that sucker, you understand? Who was gonna pay taxes on that? But all right, I gave him the check back. Then a few years later I picked up a book and read where they paid Elvis Presley, for his first appearances on Ed Sullivan, $50,000 — and I got sick.

That told me what was happenin' — what rock & roll really was, and rhythm & blues. Rhythm & blues was for me — "ripoff & bullshit." It was to keep me from gettin' my hands on any money, and anybody else that looked like Bo Diddley — meanin' black cats. Elvis himself didn't have anything to do with this — he was only takin' whatever he could get comin' up. But, see, the people that was dealin' in this was much older. And they'd say, "We're gonna take him to the back, but we're going to take him to the front," you understand? We were dealin' with this type of thing. So rock & roll was for the Caucasians, and R&B was for the black cats. And I was black, so I got hung up in the R&B, which.... the money wasn't the same. If you're R&B, you don't make the big money. If you're rock & roll, you make all the money, or your price is a lot different, one way or another. It was basically all the same music, but if you could get a white boy to record it, certain stations would play it. "We'd break it if you get a white boy to do it" — some radio-station people told record companies this.