Bo Diddley (December 30, 1928 -June 2, 2008)

Bo Diddley died yesterday. He was 79. For those of us who remember him, the obit in the New York Times provided some laughs, not at Bo’s expense, but at the gormlessness of the writer, Ben Ratliff.

The funniest, and most revealing, was an alleged quotation from the lyrics of Bo’s first hit, “Bo Diddley bought his babe a diamond ring.” Anybody with a radio and an ear knew it was “Bo Diddley buy babe a diamond ring.” Ratliff’s version sounds like William F. Buckley talking about a gift for an infant.” And it doesn’t scan either. He must have downloaded the lyrics instead of listening to the recording. Of course, what can you expect from a writer who refers to “Mr. Diddley?”

Later on, Mr. Ratliff says his subject was a founder of rock n roll, along with Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis. Including Lewis in this list is like ranking the guy who fixes your lamp alongside Edison . Maybe he meant Huey Lewis. If you’re searching around for a white guy influential in early rock, try Bill Haley, who gradually turned country swing into rock with a southern white feel before Elvis Presley who later hocked his chops for a suite in Las Vegas (or sold his birthright for a mess).

Toward the end of his piece, Mr. Ratliff writes: “But soon a foreign market for his earlier music began to grow, thanks in large part to the Rolling Stones, a newly popular band that was regularly playing several of his songs in its concerts.” To broadly paraphrase Louis Armstrong, if you got to have the Rolling Stones explained, you ain’t never gonna get to the third page of that damn review!

Those of us who remember the crashing revelation of those strange guitar chords know the truth. We white kids had found something that kept our ears glued to the radio and also freaked out our parents. Paradise !

When I was fifteen, my mother and father agreed to buy me a guitar. We went to Sam Asch’s Music Store on Nostrand Avenue and I tried one, another, and another. When I got my hands on a Gibson L-48 I played the Bo Diddley chords and some kid said to his mother, “Mom, he’s playing Bo Diddley!” I knew I had my instrument. And I still have it, beat up and mostly unused, but always at hand.

In April, 1989, I finally saw the man in person at the Blind Pig in Ann Arbor. He rocked the joint. I shook his hand like an awe-struck kid, not a fifty year old with a career. Only a few years ago, I saw him again at the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival. He had a different audience and a different show. In addition to his greatest hits he played jazz and did impressions. On that day, “Mr. Diddley” was a funny and versatile entertainer.

ehhh

Later on I kept on hearing Bo Diddley in the music of others. He was to rock n roll what Mozart was to classical music or Ty Cobb was to baseball: an innovator whose influence is everywhere.