One of the all-time greats, dead at 79. He was a gunslinger. His obituary is here. Here's a mid-'60s clip from The Big TNT Show of Ellas McDaniel singing out his favorite song title: "Hey Bo Diddley." The Duchess is playing electric guitar on the far right.
In 2005, Keith Richards talked about Diddley's impact with Rolling Stone: "Muddy and Chuck were close to the straight electric blues, but Bo was fascinatingly on the edge. There was something African going on in there. His style was outrageous, suggesting that the kind of music we loved didn't just come from Mississippi. It was coming from somewhere else."
Dr. Bruce Klauber, biographer of Gene Krupa, wrote me this morning with this story of interviewing Diddley in 1980: "He was playing at a fondly-remembered, Old City venue called "Stars." Bo was a true rhythm guitar player and nothing more--actually more of a percussionist than anything else-- but he really made the instrument work for him in many ways. He did not use effects pedals, rather, every guitar effect--distortion, echo, reverb, wah, etc.--was actually built in to Bo's various triangular, fur-covered and rectangular guitars. Bo told me he felt that effects pedals detracted from what he was trying to do on stage, and that in order to even lift one of his instruments, he said, "You had to be a man. " There was a very, very obscure LP Bo made with Chuck Berry, when both were under contract to Chess/Checker, called "Chuck Berry Meets Bo Diddley." It is absolutely awful, but is a must-have. When I asked Bo about Chuck, he could only reply, "He don't play s---."
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