Bo Diddley Knew Rock

Update

Bo Diddley Knew Rock

Mon., Jun. 2, 2008 3:16 PM PDT by Joal Ryan

Bo Diddley knew Bo Diddley's place in rock 'n' roll history: "I was the first dude out there."

Diddley, the pioneering performer whose shuffling rhythm guitar sound can be found in the DNA of hits by everyone from Buddy Holly to George Michael, and who famously found a sparring partner in two-sport athlete Bo Jackson, died today of heart failure at his Florida home. He was 79.

"Tell everybody you never get tool old to rock 'n' roll," Diddley told National Public Radio in 2007.

True enough, Diddley remained on the road until last year when he suffered first a stroke and then a heart attack.

A 1987 inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Diddley's five-decade-long recording career was marked by hits such as "Who Do You Love" and the self-titled jam, "Bo Diddley." It also produced soundtrack staples such as "Love Is Strange," recorded by the duo Mickey & Sylvia, and revived 30 years later in Dirty Dancing, and "She's Fine—She's Mine," used to help shade The Color of Money.

Diddley was born Ellas Otha Bates, on Dec. 30, 1928, in McComb, Miss. His official biography notes that he later took the surname McDaniel after the family member who raised him, but not even it is certain of where and how Ellas McDaniel morphed into Bo Diddley.

Whatever the story, the rechristened Diddley began making a music name for himself in 1955, with his first hit single, "I'm a Man."

"Bo Diddley" soon followed, and with it, the syncopated, 5/4 "Bo Diddley beat" that would go on to power songs such as Holly's "Not Fade Away" and Michael's "Faith," and inspire acts such as the Rolling Stones, the Who and even punk rock's the Clash, with whom Diddley toured in 1979.

Diddley was ever conscious of receiving his due. If he couldn't control the money end of things—and he said he didn't receive just compensation for his recordings—then he could push for respect. As his 1996 album proclaimed, when it came to rock he was The Originator.

"Little Richard came two or three years later, along with Elvis Presley," Diddley once told Australia's Sydney Morning Herald. "In other words, I was the first dude out there."

Over the years, the tributes piled up commensurate to his contributions. Nearly a decade after his Rock Hall induction, Diddley received the Grammys' Lifetime Achievement Award, despite never winning a competitive Grammy.

In the late 1980s, his career was kicked into the prime-time spotlight when he began supplying the beat to a series of Nike commercials starring Jackson, then a year-round football and baseball star. The spots, a riff on the sneaker giant's "Bo Knows" campaign, ended with Diddley admonishing his talented namesake, "Bo, you don't know Diddley."

In the end, the rock world did know Diddley. In a statement today, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame president and CEO Terry Stewart called the performer "one of the seminal American guitarists and an architect of the rock and roll sound."

Of that statement, Diddley just might have approved.

(Originally published June 2, 2008 at 10:09 a.m. PT.)