Saying good-bye to Bo June 3, 2008
Posted by reformedville in : culture , trackbackBo Diddley bridged the blues and rock ‘n’ roll
Bo Diddley Video (link)
Mr. Diddley, whose signature bomp ba-bomp bomp bomp bomp beat influenced musicians from Buddy Holly and the Rolling Stones to Bruce Springsteen and U2, had suffered a heart attack last August, three months after being felled by a stroke during a performance in Iowa. He had returned to Florida, his home of 20 years, to rehabilitate.
Mr. Diddley cut a distinctive figure in music during a career that spanned more than a half-century with his ever-present black hat, horn-rimmed glasses, and rectangular guitar - originally rigged with junkyard clockworks and car parts to create a distorted and otherworldly tremolo sound that would be heard a decade later in the work of Jimi Hendrix and Buddy Guy.
Even though Mr. Diddley enjoyed only a handful of hits during a 40-year recording career, his impact on the evolution of rock music was vast.
“Bo Diddley is one of the seminal American guitarists and an architect of the rock ‘n’ roll sound,” said Terry Stewart, president and chief executive of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland. “His unique guitar work, indelible rhythms, inventive songwriting, and larger-than-life personality make him an immortal author of the American songbook.”
Mr. Diddley, who bridged the blues and rock ‘n’ roll with a string of groundbreaking records in the 1950s, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (by the members of ZZ Top) in 1987 at the museum’s second annual ceremony.
He received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Rhythm and Blues Foundation Pioneer Awards in 1996 and a similar honor at the Grammys in 1999.
But like other black, midcentury music innovators, Mr. Diddley said he received neither the credit he deserved from the press or the public, nor financial compensation for his recordings. He remained bitter for the rest of his life about what he viewed as the exploitation of early rock ‘n’ rollers by record companies, promoters, and publishers.
“Elvis was not first; I was the first son of a gun out here, me and Chuck Berry. And I’m very sick of the lie,” Mr. Diddley said in a 2005 interview with Rolling Stone magazine. “You know, we are over that black-and-white crap, and that was all the reason Elvis got the appreciation that he did. I’m the dude that he copied, and I’m not even mentioned. . . . I’ve been out here for 50 years, man, and I haven’t ever seen a royalty check.”
Mr. Diddley performed tirelessly until last year.
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