Background

Bo Diddley was born Ellas Bates on December 30, 1928, on a small farm near the town of McComb, Mississippi, in rural Pike County, close to the Louisiana border. He was 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-1930s the family moved to the south side of Chicago.

Education

Diddley studied violin under Professor O.W. Frederick for 12 years starting at age 7. He began teaching himself guitar in the early 1940s while attending Foster Vocational High School. His unique approach to guitar, he recalled, stemmed largely from his attempts to imitate the sound of a bow on a violin.

As a teen, he began playing for tips on the streets and eventually in clubs with groups that included blues recording artists Jody Williams and Billy Boy Arnold. To achieve his own sound Diddley rebuilt guitar amplifiers and constructed a tremolo unit out of a clock spring and automobile parts, and enhanced the group's rhythm by adding maracas and drums.

In 2008, Bo Diddley was posthumously awarded a Doctor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Florida, shortly after his death on June 2nd of that year.

Career

Shortly before leaving school Bo Diddley 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.

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 two 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 Records subsidiary label Checker Records. It went straight to the top of the R&B charts, establishing him as one of the most exciting and original new talents in American music.

Bo Diddley is best known for his impact on American music. His songs influenced future generations of musicians including Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, The Doors, the Rolling Stones, and Bruce Springsteen. Even the rhythm of his music is heard in more contemporary songs such as "I Want Candy," "Desire" by U2, and "Faith" by George Michael.

However, during the 1970s, his popularity waned as the music was changing.

When he was in his early 70s, he was still very active in the recording studio and in the clubs and the concert halls around the world. He performed a rousing version of his classic song "Who Do You Love" with George Thorogood & The Destroyers in front of a TV audience of millions at the Live Aid Concert in Philadelphia in 1985.

Still, he continued playing and touring with bands including The Grateful Dead and The Clash. His music is credited in over 150 films, documentaries, and TV shows. His final studio album was titled Man Amongst Men which was released in 1996.

Achievements

• 

  Bo Diddley was known for many new musical styles and innovations. He was one of the first musicians of the 1950s to incorporate woman musicians including Lady Bo. He hired her full-time to play all of his stage performances whereupon she became the first female lead guitarist in history to be employed by a major act.
  
  Also, the usage of special effects like reverb, tremolo and the manipulations of his guitar made him a ground-breaking musician. Diddley hopped and strutted around the stage while playing his guitar over his head, with his teeth, and even between his legs. In that regard, he influenced numerous rock musicians from the 1960s on.
  
  In 1986 Bo Diddley was inducted into the Washington Area Music Association's Hall of Fame. Then in the following year, he was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. In 1996, Diddley received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation in Los Angeles. While the following year his 1955 debut recording of his song "Bo Diddley" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame as a recording of lasting qualitative or historical significance. Also in 1996, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammy Awards Ceremony. In 2000, Diddley was inducted into the Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame as well as in the North Florida Music Association's Hall of Fame. In 2007, Diddley went to Mississippi to receive the Governor's Award of Excellence in the Arts for Lifetime Achievement, which is the State's highest arts honor.

Works

More photos

• music

  • Bo Diddley 1958
  • Go Bo Diddley 1959
  • Have Guitar Will Travel 1960
  • In The Spotlight 1960
  • Bo Diddley Is A Gunslinger 1960
  • Bo Diddley Is A ... Lover 1961
  • Is A Twister 1962
  • Bo Diddley & Company 1962
  • Surfin' with Bo Diddley 1963
  • Hey! Good Lookin' 1965
  • Let The Kids Dance/500 Percent More Man 1965
  • The Originator 1966
  • The Black Gladiator 1970
  • Another Dimension 1971
  • Where It All Began 1972
  • The London Bo Diddley Sessions 1973
  • Big Bad Bo 1974
  • 20th Anniversary of Rock'n'Roll 1976
  • Ain’t It Good To Be Free 1983
  • Living Legend 1989
  • Breakin' Through the B.S. 1989
  • A Man Amongst Men 1996
  • Rare & Well Done 1991
  • Promises 1994
  • A Man Amongst Men 1996
  • Moochas Gracias 2002

Religion

Bo Diddley took classical violin lessons from Professor O.W. Frederick of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, famous for being the church where Gospel choirs were first organized.

Politics

Bo played at the George Bush presidential inauguration in 1989 and Bill Clinton's in 1993, making him one of the few artists to play both a Republican and Democrat Inaugural event.

Views

Bo Diddley became interested in guitar after hearing John Lee Hooker on the radio.

Diddley designed his distinctive, rectangular guitar himself, and was also one of the first performers to set up a home recording studio. At his home studio in District of Columbia, Diddley recorded some vocals by a young Marvin Gaye, who, at the time, was Bo's valet (a kind of assistant or errand runner). There is a possibility that Gaye is singing background on some of Diddley's tracks from that time, as he recorded "Who Do You Love" and several other tracks in that studio.

Quotations: "I thank you in advance for the great round of applause I'm about to get."

"I opened the door for a lot of people, and they just ran through and left me holding the knob."

"Don't let your mouth write a check that your tail can't cash."

Personality

Bo, himself, said his stage name came from another performer whom his adopted mother knew in Chicago. The slang phrase, "bo diddley" translates to "absolutely nothing." It has also been said that he got the name from friends as a teenager and boxer, or that Leonard Chess gave him the name which was also the name of a comedian in Chicago. Some claim he took the name from the one-stringed instrument, the Diddley Bow.

In 1955, he appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and was asked to perform the song, "Sixteen Tons." He agreed, but when he took the stage, he read Sullivan's cue card which had "Bo Diddley" written on the top, indicating his name. The bluesman reasonably assumed they had wanted him to perform his hit song, also named Bo Diddley. Sullivan was furious that Bo had not followed his explicit instructions and was never asked to return, but the damage had already been done - After that performance, Bo was an international sensation.

In 1989 and 1990, Nike had a huge hit with one of their most famous ad campaigns, "Bo Knows," where sports legend Bo Jackson played different sports while Bo Diddley riffed with his guitar. In the end, the musician utters "Bo, you don’t know Diddley!". The phrase immediately entered the American popular culture, and "You Don’t Know Diddley" became a hip thing to wear. Jackson and Diddley even appeared on Sesame Street, joking about "Bo Knows" with the Muppets. Even in 2015, singer Drake was seen wearing one of the vintage "You Don’t Know Diddley" tees.

Physical Characteristics: In May 2007, Bo suffered a stroke after playing a gig in Council Bluffs, Iowa, but within a month had recovered sufficiently to be discharged from a hospital near his home in Archer, Florida. Diddley had a history of hypertension and diabetes, and the stroke affected the left side of his brain, causing receptive and expressive aphasia (speech impairment).

Quotes from others about the person

• Bo Diddley was important because he did something that was completely unheard of at the time, and that was, he used his guitar as a percussion instrument, not as melody or color, but as something that was an extension of what drums would be doing." - Rob Fields
  
  "He was a wonderful, original musician who was an enormous force in music and was a big influence on the Rolling Stones. He was very generous to us in our early years and we learned a lot from him." - Mick Jagger

Interests

• Sport & Clubs

  Boxing

• Music & Bands

  John Lee Hooker

Connections

Bo Diddley married his first wife, Louise Woolingham, in 1946 but the marriage did not survive and the couple divorced in 1947. He later married Ethel Mae Smith in 1949. The couple had two children but divorced in 1956. In 1960, he married Kay Reynolds. They had two children and stayed married until 1980 when they divorced. In 1992, Diddley married Sylvia Paiz. The couple divorced in 2005.

Father:

Eugene Bates

Mother:

Ethel Wilson

colleague:

Little Richard

ex-wife:

Sylvia Paiz

ex-wife:

Kay Reynolds

ex-wife:

Louise Woolinghamm

Cousin:

Willis McDaniel

Cousin:

Lucille McDaniel

Cousin:

Freddie McDaniel

ex-wife:

Ethel Mae Smith

Son:

Ellas Anthony McDaniel

Daughter:

Terri Lynn McDaniel

Daughter:

Evelyn Kelly

Daughter:

Tammi D. McDaniel

aunt:

Gussie McDaniel

colleague:

Roy Wood

colleague:

Bill Haley

colleague:

Alvin Lee

colleague:

Joe Cocker

colleague:

Chuck Berry

Bo once lamented that "me and Chuck Berry are the ones that opened the doors and broke the ice, but everybody does not understand what we contributed to this thing called rock'n'roll," the music world did its best to make amends in the new millennium.

colleague:

Norma-Jean Wofford

colleague:

Marvin Gaye

References

• Bo Diddley Je suis un homme
  2012
• Bo Diddley: Living Legend
  1998
• The Life and Hard Times of Bo Diddley: an interview with rock-n-roll's "Originator"
  2011
• Bo Diddley
  2019
• Bo Diddley: Rock & Roll All-Star
  2010