Bo Diddley Discography

• 
  16 All Time Greatest Hits
• 
  His Best

Related Artists

Songs By

Harvey Fuqua :: Jerome Green :: Ellas McDaniel :: Eugene McDaniels :: Scott Free

Influenced By

Muddy Waters :: Louis Jordan :: John Lee Hooker

Followers

Cub Koda :: Who :: Yardbirds :: George Thorogood :: The Rolling Stones :: The Wheels :: The Animals :: The Flamin` Groovies :: John Fogerty :: Eric Burdon :: Brownsville Station :: Quicksilver Messenger Service :: Jimi Hendrix :: Dr. Feelgood :: King Kurt :: Captain Beefheart :: The Pretty Things :: Stray Cats :: J. Geils Band :: Aerosmith

Similar Artists

Little Walter :: The Pretty Things :: Yardbirds :: Johnny Otis :: Chuck Berry :: Esquerita :: The Rolling Stones :: Eddie Cochran :: Otis Spann :: Little Richard :: Mitch Ryder :: Manfred Mann :: Cub Koda :: Elvis Presley :: The Kinks :: The Flamin` Groovies :: Everly Brothers :: Black Crowes :: The Downliners Sect :: Billy Boy Arnold

See also Biography Index (B) :: Filmography Index (B) :: Discography Index (B)

Ever heard "I Want Candy" or "Not Fade Away" or "Willie & The Hand Jive", Shirley & Company`s "Shame, Shame, Shame" or U2`s "Desire" or George Michael`s "Faith"? If you have, then you`ve heard the "Bo Diddley beat", the most famous beat in the world! One of the founding fathers of rock `n` roll, Bo Diddley`s innovative pounding and hypnotic, Latin-tinged beat, his vast array of electric custom-built guitars, his use of reverb, tremelo and distortion to make his guitars talk, mumble and roar, his use of female musicians, his wild stage shows, and his on-record and on-stage rapping, pre-date all others. Bo Diddley was born Ellas Bates on Sunday December 30, 1928, on a small farm near the town of McComb, Mississippi, in rural Pike County, close to the Louisiana border, the only child of Ethel Wilson and Eugene Bates, he had three half-brothers and a half-sister. He was adopted by his mother`s cousin, Mrs. Gussie McDaniel, along with his cousins Willis, Lucille and Freddie, and adopted the name Ellas McDaniel. In the mid-1`30s the family moved to the south side of Chicago. Soon after, he began to take violin lessons from Professor O.W. Frederick at the Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church. He studied the violin for 12 years, composing two concertos for the instrument. For Christmas in 1940, his sister Lucille bought him his first guitar, a cheap Harmony acoustic. It was at this time that he acquired the nickname "Bo Diddley" (" . . . Bo Diddley is me; to tell ya the truth, I don`t know what it [the name] really is . . . ") from his fellow pupils at the Foster Vocational High School in Chicago. The newly named Bo Diddley had long been fascinated by the rhythms that he heard coming from the sanctified churches. A frustrated drummer, he tried to translate the sounds that he heard into his own style. Gradually he began to duplicate what he did with his violin bow by rapidly flicking his pick across his guitar strings: "I play the guitar as if I`m playing the drums . . . I play drum licks on the guitar." He continued to practice the guitar through his early teens. Shortly before leaving school he formed his first group, a trio named The Hipsters, later known as The Langley Avenue Jive Cats, after the Chicago street where he lived. Upon graduation he pursued a variety of low-paid occupations including truck driving, building site work and boxing, playing locally with his group to supplement his income. Around this time he married his first wife, Louise Woolingham, but the marriage did not survive. A year later he married Ethel "Tootsie" Smith, a marriage that lasted just over a decade. In 1950 maracas player Jerome Green joined the group, followed a year later by harmonica player Billy Boy Arnold. After more than a decade of playing on street corners and in clubs around Chicago, Bo Diddley finally got the chance to cut a demo of 2 songs that he had written; "Uncle John" and "I`m A Man". After various rejections from local record labels (most notably VeeJay), in the spring of 1955 he took the recordings to brothers Leonard and Phil Chess, owners of Chess Records, with studios located at 4750-2 South Cottage Grove Ave. in Chicago. They suggested that he changed the title and the lyrics of "Uncle John" to more reflect his own unique personality. The twp songs were re-recorded at Bill Putnam`s Universal Recording Studio at 111 E. Ontario in Chicago on Wednesday, March 2, 1955, and released as a double A-side disc "Bo Diddley"/"I`m A Man" on the Chess R