The Diddley Daddy: R.I.P.

Bo Diddley – “Hey Bo Diddley”

Bo Diddley – “The Story of Bo Diddley”
(from His Best: The Chess 50th Anniversary Collection)

The Diddley Daddy is dead, and it’s a sad scene over here at Post-Rockist HQ. I’m alone, disheveled in a dark room blasting Bo Diddley’s greatest hits, half choking back tears, half laughing my ass off at his brilliantly witty ditties (”I look like a farmer, but I’m a lover/You can’t judge a book by lookin’ at the cover.”). I’m a mess. More than any other early rock’n'roller, Bo Diddley was a true pioneer through and through. He not only regularly created his own guitars out of salvaged junkyard materials, some as small as a cigar box and some too big for one man to carry, he was also one of the first popular musicians to create his own home recording studios, and, to top it all off, this poor boy from Mississippi created his own damn rhythm — the “Bo Diddley beat,” a tense, wound-up, one-chord wonder that manages to build up excitement with each successive scratch. Just listen to “Hey Bo Diddley” — that crude, busking rumba beat with Diddley’s electric Gretsch skittering about while he mythologizes himself to the tune of “Old Macdonald.” It’s beyond incredible. His singles may not have met with as much chart success as his contemporaries Little Richard and Chuck Berry, but his impact on the world of rock’n'roll culture is too great to overstate. Look at it this way: Keith Richards stole his chops and Andre 3000 stole his style. Quite simply, the man is a legend. But he doesn’t need me to tell you that, Bo’s been toasting and boasting himself since before anyone put a microphone in front of his mouth. I’ll let him tell it:

I was born one night about 12 o’clock, ha ha ha
I come into this world playing a gold guitar
My poppa walk around stickin’ out his chest, hee hee
Aw Momma this boy, he gonna be a mess, ha ha ha ha ha
Yeah, uh huh
Oh, uh huh
Now, people came from miles around
Just to hear my little guitar sound
Now some of ‘em said I had what it takes
If I keep on practicin’ I’ll be famous one day, ha haa
Whoo, I’m a mess, I’m a killah dillah
Early in the middle of the night
A car drove up with four headlights, ha ha ha ha
Now a man stepped out with a loooong cigar
He said, ‘Sign this line I’m gonna make you a star’
I said, ‘Now what is it man? What’s in it for me?’
He said, ‘Just play your guitar, and wait and see’
Here I am, Wheeee!
The girls like me
They say I’m crazy
Say I’m nice
My first engagement was in Chicago
I played for some people I never seen before
It was good too
They liked it
Ha ha ha ha ha
Wheeee! Yeah!
Killah dillah

Bo Diddley, you will be missed. R.I.P.