Why is this man missing on a guitar/music forum?????

Ba-ba-da-ba-da-ba Hey Bo Diddly. I don't know all his stuff but what I did hear sounded a bit 'samey' to me...Ba-ba-da-ba-da-ba......maybe that's Mrs Diddly....and she liked to fiddly wid his diddly....Ba-ba-da-ba-da-ba.

Amsterhammer........Thanks for the reminder, GOOD STUFF.

Maybe the several, lonely, isolated Bo posts around the board would have ended up here if I'd been smart enough to put his name in the title. Duh.

Anyway, I just wanted to share some more opinions that tend to agree with my own - - namely, that Bo Diddley's importance to, and influence on, the music that we all love has been, and will continue to be, HUGE.

The following from Blueswax (apologies for the length, but there is lots of good history here -

Goodbye Bo Diddley

It is with heavy hearts that we say farewell to one of the legends of our music. Bo Diddley left a void in the music world on Monday, June 2, 2008, at the age of 79.

Each year we lose some important part of Blues history and it is important that we all take at least a moment to realize the impact that these legends have had on our lives. Not just how we enjoy some of our free time at festivals or the local clubs, but how they have truly impacted our lives. We all can remember the first time we heard the Blues and how it touched deeper than any music ever had. Suddenly the music we were listening to felt like him to put it out and give it a hook. Arnold suggested the name Bo Diddley since it was a colorful name to a crazy character. Leonard liked it. When the record came out instead of Ellas McDaniel being on the label it said "Bo Diddley" by Bo Diddley, with the flip side being "I'm A Man." So began Bo's own colorful career.

Bo and Leonard employed a few harmonica wizards on his early sides besides Billy Boy. Lester Davenport, Little Walter, and even Willie "Big Eyes" Smith guested on Chess sides in the mid-Fifties. Plus Bo was the inspiration and guitarist on one of Little Walter's wildest harp rides, the amazing "Roller Coaster" as well as "Hate To See You Go." Bo's rhythmic and primal originality will be sorely missed in an increasingly pre-packaged plastic music world. Bo's music will live on.

Bob Margolin is a contributing editor at BluesWax - In 1973, the morning after my first night playing with Muddy Waters we were loading our gear out of a club in Boston, when Bo rolled up to load in. I was excited to move into the world of these legends, certainly star struck. I opened club dates and festivals for him a few times over the years and always made sure I was there to enjoy his set. The most moving time I saw him was on a tribute to Muddy Waters at the Kennedy Center in 1997. Muddy had used the music to Bo's hit "I'm A Man" for a follow-up single "Mannish Boy" and of course you know it became one of Muddy's most powerful songs. Bo performed his own song by himself, no band, and the manly force he put into it grew with every line he played and sang. Bo showed that he not only wrote, but truly owned that song, even compared to Muddy. Last Sunday I played at a benefit in Tampa and worked with fine local players. I took the opportunity to jam on Bo's "Who Do You Love." Monday, flying home, I read the current Blues Revue story about Billy Boy Arnold, which spoke of his early history with Bo. I knew Bo was ill and I made a wish for his recovery, but I didn't know until later that he had just left us. Hey Bo Diddley, your songs and spirit will ring out thousands of times every day, on bandstands all over the world.

Don Wilcock is a contributing editor at BluesWax - What a shame Bo Diddley had to die before he made the front page of The New York Times. And even then, his invention of Rock 'n' Roll is defined with the qualification "with a handful of other musical pioneers." I suppose technically that's true, but if you believe electric guitar is the heart and soul of Rock 'n' Roll, you have to give him an edge over Elvis and Little Richard. He was the only Rock 'n' Roller to write and perform a song named after himself, and I can clearly remember interviewing him years ago as he indignantly denied that he took his name from the diddley bow, a one-stringed guitar.

For me Bo Diddley always personified the reality that African Americans have a very tangible problem breaking through the glass ceiling to gain acceptance commensurate with their obvious abilities, and I struggle with the knowledge that he died one day too early to see the first African American win a major party endorsement as the United States presidential candidate. The irony of that alone is almost as poignant as James Brown dying on Christmas day.

I remember how thrilled - and shocked - I was to see Bo playing in the basement of a fraternity to a bunch of drunken pledges during rush week at Tufts University in 1963. A decade and a half later he played a gig in Troy, New York, with a local pickup band. I put him on the cover of my first issue of King Biscuit Time as editor-in-chief with the headline "Bodacious Bo," A few years ago he spent a majority of his hour and a half in front 10,000 at the Fleet Blues Fest in Albany, New York, trying to convince us all that he was the first rapper. Listen again to "Bo Diddley" and "I'm a Man." He was right. Too bad he felt he had to spend a whole concert to prove it. I saw him last within the last year backstage at Proctor's Theatre in Schenectady, New York. He was more relaxed and had a lovely young dietician by his side whose job purportedly was to see that he ate and lived right. Yeah!

Bob Gersztyn is a contributing editor at BluesWax - When I interviewed Bo Diddley in 2006, one of the last things that he said to me was - "Let these kids know today, where it all began, and the way it's really done. Don't sample our stuff, think for yourself." He believed that every generation needed to create its own music, that was reflective of its time period, just as he and his generation had. He believed that music was the answer to the world's problems when it united people together through a transcendent mixture of the sacred and the profane, as manifested in a good boogie.

BluesWax Sittin' In With Bo Diddley

Part One

By Bob Gersztyn

Ellas Bates was born on a farm outside of McComb, Mississippi, in 1928. Soon afterwards he was adopted by his mother's cousin, Mrs. Gussie McDaniel, and became Ellas McDaniel. By the mid-1930s, the family moved Ellas and his three cousins to the South Side of Chicago, where he became fascinated with the violin and began studying classical violin for the next 12 years. In 1940, his sister Lucille bought him his first guitar for Christmas, which he immediately began experimenting with. His fascination with the rhythms that he heard emanating from the Pentecostal Holiness churches in which he grew up soon evolved into a guitar sound. One of the reasons for this was because he attempted to play drums but was unable to coordinate his hands, so instead he used the guitar to recreate the sounds he heard.

Bates acquired the nickname Bo Diddley while he was attending the Foster Vocational High School in Chicago. After graduation from high school he worked as a truck driver, construction worker, boxer, and part-time musician.  His early music groups were The Hipsters and The Langley Avenue Jive Cats. After playing on street corners and clubs for a year, he recorded two songs on the Chess Records offshoot Checker Records. The self-penned compositions were released as "Bo Diddley" and "I'm A Man" on a double A-side 45 rpm record on May 4, 1955.  It soon hit the top of the Rhythm & Blues charts and established Bo Diddley in the music world.  Through the years he's influenced everyone from Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, and The Rolling Stones to Prince, Run DMC, George Thorogood, and Tom Petty. He's been inducted into just about every music hall of fame on the planet so it seemed logical to try and obtain an interview with one of the most important originator's of today's musical sound in Western Civilization for BluesWax.

Bob Gersztyn for BluesWax: You began your musical involvement through the church.  That seems to be common among many of the early pioneers of Rock 'n' Roll.  Why is that?

Bo Diddley: I don't know. That's where we learned how to do something.

BW: Were you going to church with your parents?

BD: Yeah, but I wasn't playing no Rock 'n' Roll in it then.

BW: I read that your first music teacher, who taught you violin, was the pastor of a church wasn't he?

BD: No. Professor O. W. Frederick.

BW: I must have misread it in your biography.

BD: Somebody added some **## to something that you read. It wasn't so. My pastor of my church was Reverend Smith and the man who took care of the music part was the professor O. W. Frederick, Oscar Frederick, and he taught me violin, so I played classical music for twelve years.

BW: When you first were starting out, I mean as very young in the 1930s and '40s, who were the people that influenced you at that time?

BD: Nobody. Nobody influenced me to play classical music. I saw a dude with a violin and a stick and that looked really cool, you know? And my church got together and took up twenty-nine dollars and that's what it cost back then. Twenty-nine bucks was a lot of money back then.

BW: I'm sure it was.

BD: It was man. [laughter] You could get a sack of potatoes for like damn near ten cents.

BW: When you look back on the tumultuous period that was going on in the 1960s, how did that affect you? Were you involved in that in any way?

BD: Like what do you mean?

BW: Everything from Civil Rights to the hippies.

BD: I wasn't involved in that, but I benefited from that, from the people that was doing it, you know. Because this **## should have never been that way in the first place. America has got some deep bullshit going on, you know, that we're walking in. This is a beautiful country and I think we got one of the greatest systems in the world, but it's got some flaws, a lot of bad flaws and it makes us no different from the people like the people that they fighting right now. We got some **## going on right here in this country that should not be going on. I'm talking about freedom. I don't think that you're supposed to go out and do wrong and then hide behind the flag, but a lot of people are doing that right now. Being a black man, I used to wouldn't even say **## like that because I think that one day everybody would be as one. Regardless of who we are, if the Bible is right, we are all sisters and brothers, regardless of what color we are. What nationality or whatever way you want to put it. That's the way I see it. I never thought about people being black and white, yellow and green and all that crap. We are all one.

Look at how the war is going on. I've been involved in it just as much as my white brothers. Now if it's going to be separated what do you want me to go fight for? It ain't no business of mine, I didn't do it, so why should I fight. I'll stay back here and take care of the house, sweep the floors and all that, but instead we're all in the same boat, baby. We all in the same boat and America needs to get rid of these standards that we got going on. See, just wake up and smell the roses. That's all.

BW: How has racism affected you in your career over the years?

BD: I'm still working. I never got a royalty check from Chess Records. It went to Sugar Hill and I ain't seen no money yet. Everything that I own I got it from working one nighter's. A lot of people don't understand how that can happen. All they have to do is...the people don't pay you, that's all. If they can stay away from me long enough, because first of all you got to have money to get a lawyer. You dig?

BW: Yeah, I dig.

BD: And then if there's no money in what you're doing you can't get no lawyer. So they ain't worried. They fight you with your money and I've been a victim of that and I'm not happy about it and I figure one day, maybe before I leave this damn Earth, that I'll go out and look in my mailbox and they'll be in there. In other words, that ain't gonna happen; this is America. That's what you call a good old America rip off. You look at me right now. If I decided to jump up and go one hundred percent suing somebody, it would be crazy for me to do it. You know why? Because they got something up the road called Statute of Limitation. Just like you're doing a story right now. Alright, now if somebody else copies something that you did and it might be a statute of three months, if there's anything called a statute. It could be a hoax for all I know. Somebody gets something of yours and you wait four months to go after them, you might as well go back over and sit down, because they got it for their own. There's a statute on that, you should have did that 23 days ago. [laughter] Do you hear what I'm saying?

BW: Yeah, but....

BD: You're screwed right there, man. You ain't going to get nothing, so you might as well shut the hell up and go back home. And that's what's happening right now. These people don't have to run from me, because they know that I ain't going to get nothing if I take them to court.

BW: How many times in your career do you feel that you've been ripped off?

BD: I been ripped off for millions baby! Millions! I'm not just saying that as just a word. I've been ripped off. I have never seen a royalty check that came to me. I had some problems with a song. I'm gonna tell you this, but I don't talk about it. A song that I wrote back in 1957 called "Before You Accuse Me," I had some problems that the publishing company was paying another dude and my name is Ellas, and they was paying another dude and somebody sees something in a magazine and calls me and says, "Bo, did you write a song called such and such." Yep. "Well there's some other dude in there that say he got paid for a song that he don't remember writing." Eric Clapton did the song, but Eric don't have nothing to do with people getting paid. Whoever it was, sent the money to the wrong dude. What kind of **## is that?

To be continued..