Go Bo Diddley!

The sun set yesterday on the great Bo Diddley, the musician who gave rock & roll its driving beat. The man born Otha Ellis Bates cut a distinctive figure throughout his life – from his trademark glasses and rectangular-bodied guitar to the chug-a-lug tempo of many of his classic tunes, Bo Diddley always stood out.

Diddley’s sound was a bedrock of rock & roll, and the list of bands that borrowed directly from him could fill a phone book. It’s a roll call that includes the likes of (take a deep breath): Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Dick Dale, The Who, The Byrds, The Stooges, David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen, The Clash, U2, The Smiths, and White Stripes. The Rolling Stones were perhaps most notable among his disciples, and included many Diddley covers in their mid-60’s live sets. There’s influential, and then there’s Bo Diddley.

In 1975, critic Charles Shaar Murray observed that “While Chuck Berry is lionized to hell and gone, Bo Diddley remains almost totally neglected.” It was a sore point for Diddley, who throughout his life never felt that he got the recognition or money that was his due. His name would become familiar to a new generation of ears in a strange way: a Nike commercial (“Bo Knows“) starring Bo Jackson. “I never could figure out what it had to do with shoes, but it worked,” Diddley said. “I got into a lot of new front rooms on the tube.”

Diddley didn’t appear on many TV sets during his heyday because he made the career mistake of pissing off Ed Sullivan. Seems ol’ Ed wanted Bo to play some lame cover instead of his own self-titled hit ‘Bo Diddley’, but Bo scorched his own tune and didn’t make another TV appearance for a decade. But hey, that’s what happens when you’re an iconoclast and a gunslinger, a joker and a madman, a pioneer and a lumberjack. Bo Diddley was all of that and more. He will be missed.

Listen: Gun Slinger

Tags: Blues, Bo Diddley, RIP