Monday, 2 June 2008
Born Ellas Otha Bates (30 December 1928 – 2 June 2008) but better known under his stage name or as as Ellas McDaniel (that's the name that appears in his songwriting credits) , R&B vocalist, guitarist, songwriter and rock and roll pioneer.
Bo Diddley
Checking my email this morning I noted that we’d lost another iconic figure.
As I wandered into the bedroom to get ready for the morning walk I remarked to ‘Er Indoors that Bo Diddley had died.
Who, she asked, is Bo Diddley?
I imagine that she won’t be the only one asking that.
The day before we’d learnt of the death of Yves St Laurent.
Maybe plenty of people asked who he was as well. After all, you can’t hear fashion design.
On the other hand, anyone who’s heard their fair share of rock & roll has heard Bo Diddley, even if you didn’t hear yer actual Elias McDaniel.
I’m referring, of course, to the legendary Bo Diddley beat which traces back to the African roots of the blues as does the Diddley bow that could have supplied Mr McDaniel with his stage name. There are, of course, a number of other explanations....
A couple of my favourite manifestations of that rhythm:
covers of Mona by the Quicksilver Messenger Service and Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons;
the Bo Diddley’s A Gunslinger > Bo Diddley at the end of Warren Zevon’s classic live album Stand in the Fire;
the extended intro to She’s The One that Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were doing on stage in 1978 (there’s a particularly good one from the Agora Arena in Cleveland on 9 August 1978).
and just about any version of Not Fade Away.
In fact, if he’d received a royalty of just one cent for every minute that a rock band has spent jamming away on that rhythm Bo would have died a very wealthy man.
But you can’t patent a rhythm and the subject of unpaid royalties was a sore point as far as Bo Diddley was concerned.
Not that he was alone in that regard. Most of the seminal blues artists that recorded for Chess in the fifties and sixties mounted law suits to recover unpaid royalties, and you’ll find strangely similar complaints from any number of rock bands aggrieved by record company accounting practices.
Two people who were iconic figures in their own industries died within days of each other.
The one who would have enjoyed the wealth his work was often labelled the king of haute couture and produced work that could really only be enjoyed by the people who could afford to pay for the label.
The other one produced something that moved masses on dance floors and in concert venues and lived in much more modest circumstances.
And, somehow, out of these circumstances the song that springs to Hughesy’s mind doesn’t come from Bo Diddley.
It’s Randy Newman’s The World Isn’t Fair.
Some links that you might like to check out (in case you haven’t already):
Elvis Costello’s tribute, which suggests something that many music freaks have long suspected: Elvis is one of us...
Word magazine’s Bo-bituary, complete with YouTube footage.
One from the Washington Post.
On YouTube...
One from the Chicago Tribune
A short obituary with some interesting links
And David Blakey's Bo Diddley website.
And some later developments on the “Pay Bo Diddley” side of things...
