The winter of 1954-55 gave Bo a lot to think about--kids, wife, and job--everything that he was involved in was a source of pressure--and on the music front he learned that tastes had changed during his brief, Toots-enforced hiatus and that he would have to make some radical adjustments. Now, he discovered, he would be rejected if he tried to play like Muddy Waters. "It didn't make sense for me to play what everybody else was playing. I had to develop my own thing that would put me in a class of being an original, like Muddy, or Willie Dixon. I had to map out my own territory.î
On a local level Bo was making an impression with his forceful performances, but he knew that more was needed if he were to get ahead. His harmonica player that season was a slim, energetic youth named Billy Boy Arnold whose association with Bo dated back several years to intense sessions at the Maxwell Street Market when Arnold, then possibly only twelve or thirteen years old, had augmented Bo's driving rhythm guitar with blues-inspired harp solos. The two had remained good friends, and since Billy Boy was a keen observer of the music scene, Bo listened intently when the younger man suggested that Bo cut a record. It would certainly enhance their chances of getting better gigs, he had argued, and he knew a woman in the neighborhood who could make a demo recording for them, as well as the addresses of some of the companies Bo should go and see.
One frigid day in late February, 1955, Bo Diddley began to make the rounds on foot of the numerous independent record companies then operating in Chicago. In his hand he carried a ten-inch, one-track, 78 r.p.m. record that had recently been turned on a Webcor disc cutter. However, he encountered little interest among the record executives who heard it, one of whom, Ewart Abner of VeeJay, told him straight out that there was no market for what he termed "jungle music.î
Determined to give it one more shot for the day, Bo followed the impromptu directions of a friend and stopped on his way home at 4750 Cottage Grove Avenue, for the previous nine months the location of the enlarged studios and general offices of an outfit known as Chess Records. As he stood on the sidewalk outside, he took note of the unusual company logo; no name, just the stylized head of a horse--the Knight from a chess set--divided into segments like pieces of a pie and linked in a circle around a small open center. Thinking it weird, Bo went inside.
When he came out twenty minutes later, he went straight home, played a friendly game of checkers with an upstairs neighbor, and then got to work re-writing the material he had played at Chess Records. The people there had seemed to like it. They wanted him to brush it up a little bit and then come back the next week with the rest of his band for a recording session.
"If it hadn't have been for Sonny,î Bo recalls, "I might never have gotten a record deal. I tried pretty near every place in town and I was going home through the alley and I spotted Sonny, this guy I knew from grade school. He was throwing out old broke records. I said, ëWha. . .! Man, you mean to tell me there's a record company in there?' And he said, ëYeah, man, go round the front.' So I went in there and that's when I met Leonard and Phil Chess; their place was just around the corner from me, and all the months it had been there, I hadn't even noticed it.î
When Bo came along in 1955, Leonard and Phil Chess had been in the record business for some eight years, and their company was coming off what had been a banner year. Since they first arrived in Chicago from Poland in the late 1920's, the two Jewish brothers had always done well, thanks to their keen eye for the main chance, and--so it is said--to a gift of several thousand dollars from their father who had instructed them to double the money in their first year if they meant to be serious about business. Their record company, known initially as Aristocrat, then as Chess and Checker, had been a natural outgrowth of their ownership of a string of South Side taverns, the best known of which, the Macombo Lounge at 39th and Cottage Grove, offered quality live entertainment. At first the Chess brothers were prepared to record all kinds of popular black music--jazz, blues, country folk: it didn't matter so long as it sold well--but the fantastic reception of Muddy Waters' "I Can't Be Satisfiedî in 1948 told them clearly what the local public wanted to hear: an urban style that maintained a Southern connection, something bluesy, yet rhythmic and hard hitting, like the bruised and battered lives the music often reflected. In addition to the contribution of Muddy Waters, the brothers Chess built up their trade with hits by other artists such as Gene Ammons, Joe Williams, Howlin' Wolf, and especially Little Walter, who had kept their label in the R & B Top Ten with song after song throughout 1954. Most recently, the hammering harp sounds of Walter's "You Better Watch Yourselfî had proven a really hot item, their last big hit, in fact, before Bo's appearance.
There had even been a time that year when the Chess team had considered taking on a lanky, white youngster from Mississippi named Elvis Presley, but here their generally sound judgement proved fallible and they let the sultry voiced singer slip away to Sam Phillips' Sun Records in Memphis. Perhaps, rather than a slip in judgement, it was a case of them being cautious about sexual innuendo, for it was just about that time that Cashbox, among the biggest of music trade papers, was campaigning hard for "cleanerî lyrics on rhythm and blues releases, a consideration that must surely have come to the mind of Leonard Chess that day in 1955 when he was first confronted with the music of Bo Diddley.
"There was all kinds of conniptions when they listened to my record,î says Bo. "It was a song I had, called ëUncle John': it became the basis for the song ëBo Diddley,' with the same beat and all, but the lyrics was a little bit rough! See, it was written basically in what we call ërhyming.' That was a way we had back then when we were kids of talking dirty, but without using any words that were dirty! ëCourse, if your Momma heard you saying it you'd still get a whupping. I wasn't saying anything wrong because the words were a two-meaning words, you dig what I'm saying? So the song went like this:
ëThe bow-legged rooster told a cock-legged duck,
Said: you ain't good lookin' but you sure can crow.'î
"Hah! I can still see the look Leonard Chess had on his face, and him shaking his head! ëUh, uh,' he said. Leonard and them, they told me they liked the music but the lyrics was just too rough. He told me: ëThe old folks ain't gonna go for it, the deejays ain't gonna play it, and I ain't gonna record it!'
"So he asked me if I could come up with something different--more acceptable lyrics, you know--so I came back with ëBo Diddley,' and they liked that right away. See, it was a story basically, a story saying this guy bought a ring for his girlfriend, but he wanted to make sure that it was authentic before he gave it to her, and the best person to check it out was a private eye--ëcos he was about the baddest dude going back then. Then the fella wanted to get his girl something else, so he says, ëBo Diddley bought a bear-cat / To make his pretty baby a Sunday hat.' In other words, he's taking on more and more risk for this chick. It was rhyming again, but this time without the hidden meanings.
"It took me a coupla days to write most of it, but I was changing bits of that sucker right up until the time I recorded it. I was still calling it ëUncle John': ëUncle John bought his babe a diamond ring,' sorta thing. But my drummer, Clifton James, I think it was, said, ëBo, why don't you use your fighting name: Bo Diddley?' And I said, ëYeah, that could sound real good.' That is, until I tried singing it! It's a lot easier to say than it is to sing, and I was up nearly all night trying to get the timing just right!
"Then we had another problem right there in the studio. They knew that ëBo Diddley' was the new stuff--rock ën' roll as Alan Freed was calling it then--but for the B side, Len Chess said, ëGive me some blues or something,' so we could kinda pull in all kinds of listeners with the one record. Well, I had this other song: ëI'm a Man.' I wouldn't exactly call it blues; it was rhythm and blues with a twist, and I was still working on it, but anyway Len says let's give it a shot!
"So there we are and I'm singing the part where I'm spelling ëMan,' and Leonard says over and over, ëWell, why cain't you spell it out?' And I said, "I am spelling it: M-A-N. You ask any motherfucker on the street, they'll tell you how to spell it!' We took I don't know how many takes to get me to spell it the way he was thinking. See, he wanted me to skip four beats between each letter: ëSpell M . . . Dah doo dah-da . . . A . . .Dah doo dah-da . . . N . . . Dah doo dah-da . . . ain't that a man!' But he wasn't a musician and he didn't have any idea of what he was talkin' about, and I didn't have any idea of what he was talkin' about either!î
The two numbers--îBo Diddleyî and "I'm a Manî--pointed to two disparate strands in Bo's songwriting. The A-side was happy-go-lucky, self-celebratory, and sheer fun. With it, Bo discovered the myth-making potential of his own name and the potent persona that went with it, and songs such as "Diddley Daddy,î "Diddy Wah Diddy,î and "Diddlingî were not long in coming. But the B-side, "I'm a Man,î represented a different kind of self-assertion. It was the sort of song that could only have been written by a black youngster coming of age in a white-ordered world, and it was surely no quirk of history that the very week of its release there was serious racial friction in Chicago as the city government coped with white protests against its new policy of non-discrimination in awarding public housing. Ostensibly a declaration of sexual prowess ("All you pretty women, better stand in line / I'm gonna make love to you baby, in a hour's timeî), the song had deeper social undertones, a howl for personal recognition and rightful admittance into the world of adult power. The slow exaggeration of Bo's delivery and his invocation of the icons of backwoods' necromancy--the unnamed lucky charm of the first verse and the "John the Conquerooî of the second--would take his listeners back to the geographic and emotional connections of his formative years. If these were the roots of rock ën' roll, then "I'm a Manî--a claim uttered with a bristling, cocksure confidence that summoned up the atavism of the Delta blues--was certainly the rootiest of roots.
Checker 814, a phonographic single (as the two recordings were designated), was set for release on May 11, 1955. With it, the genie of the Bo Diddley beat (and its genius, too) was about to be let out of the bottle. Its startling rhythms and primitive world-view were quite a shock for a record-buying public that only recently had sent "The Happy Wandererî and "Mr. Sandmanî to the top of the charts. Yet, thanks to Len Chess's skill in cultivating friendly contacts with radio stations throughout the South and Midwest, Checker 814 got immediate, though not exactly universal, airplay. And true to Chess's intention, the record became a two-sided hit, attaining the number two position almost immediately on the Billboard Rhythm and Blues Charts and staying in the top 15 for nearly four months.
On one occasion Phil Chess recalled for Charles Kiel, author of Urban Blues, how he typically handled a promising new artist like Bo Diddley: "We release a coupla sides within a month or so [of the recording session] and then we start hockin'. You know what hockin' means? We send out about three thousand d.j. copies, and to distributors, radio stations, trade magazines for review; put some ads in Billboard, Cashbox, Music Vendor, in places like that and then see what happens. . . . Quick as the first record fades you get another one out there, and if the first records go pretty good you start arranging TV appearances, press parties, get him to meet the people any way you can. . . .î
However, in 1955 there was a catch to this strategy. "The first time I went out onto the road after recording for Chess,î Bo recalls, "I was playing for all-black audiences. Yeah! See, white audiences at first didn't know anything about it, that I even existed. But then all of a sudden Joe Reisman and the Ray Charles Singers recorded my song, and then Bill Black, who was Elvis's original bass player, his Trio recorded it. And with Bill Haley coming out with ëRock Around the Clock,' it kinda built an acceptance, and that was the beginning of black music getting onto white radio stations. The owners didn't realize that they were playing black music. ëCos that was their thing: they wasn't gonna play none of that stuff. But the kids started to calling for it. And when the station owners started finding out the songs were written by black artists, they freaked out! Heh, heh! And they tried to be careful not to put those records on the air, but it was too late: the demand had already built. The white kids started throwing their Steinways down in the basement, and wanting guitars so they could do like Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley!î
With the sound of Bo's polyrhythmic guitar bubbling over the sexy, sibilant maracas of Jerome Green, "Bo Diddleyî emerged as the perfect teenage beat, its pure sexual energy proving irresistible to young blacks and whites alike. Before too long high schools all over the country wanted Bo for the high school hop. By the end of July bookings had stretched into the next two years, and in one of those crazy incongruities that only 1950's rock ën' roll could produce, Bo even made it into the Yearbook of Connecticut's ultra-toney Long Branch, Westport, High School: the self-described "sixth-grade dropoutî rubbing photographic shoulders with future graduates of Ivy League Schools.
Though he wasn't too sure that his new career would last that long ("I gave it a couple of months at mostî), Bo had some scores to settle back in Chicago. "I first heard ëBo Diddley' on the radio about two months after I recorded it. It was a real good feeling. Soon all the people who ever told me I was never gonna amount to anything, started choking on their words and stuff.
"Then I quit the truck driving, but I had been thinking about doing that even before the record. ëCos my daughter Tanya had been sick one time, and Crazy, the boss, had said if I took a day off to take her to the doctor, he'd cut me for four days without pay. You see why they called him Crazy? Wasn't no way I wasn't gonna take my kid to the hospital. So I told him flat, ëGet the four days ready, man.' ëYou need a rest,' he said. So when I cut the record a few months later, I went up to him and I dropped the keys right in his hand and said, ëYou remember when you told me I needed a rest when my little girl was sick? Well, now I'm taking a rest, a long rest, man!î
"It never dawned on me that our music was gonna crossover,î observes Bo, "that anything was going to go the way it did. But again it was the radio that was behind it, and particularly because of what Alan Freed was doing.î
Their befriending of Alan Freed in about 1952 was one of the shrewdest moves that Leonard and Phil Chess has ever made. Freed was then a dance promoter and disc jockey at Cleveland's WJW station, where he had been called in to host a spin-off of Decca's euphemistically entitled "Sepia Series.î Chess R & B waxings soon formed a substantial portion of the programming for Freed's nightly shows. A white man, Freed had a vocal style well suited to the presentation of black music, his unusually gravelly voice earning him the label of a "Negro impersonatorî from more than one detractor.
But his jive patter was all his own. That ultimate authority on word sources, The Oxford English Dictionary, 1989 edition, credits Freed with the invention of the term rock ën' roll, a phrase that he applied not so much to the music as to the jitterbugging dance style that was associated with the "Rock ën' Roll Dance Partiesî that he beamed up and down the Atlantic seaboard, first from Cleveland, and then from early 1954 on, from WINS in New York.
"I remember how Alan used to introduce me at his concerts,î says Bo. ëHe used to say, ëAnd here is the man who will rock and roll you out of your seats!' Now he mighta been using it before, but that was the first time I ever heard anyone use the words ërock ën' roll' together like that.î
None of this was easy sailing for Freed and the musicians he touted, and they found that the forces of bigotry and conservatism were constantly at their heels. "You see, we were a no-no until Alan Freed came along,î said Bo one time to Chuck Berry and Little Richard in an intense but amiable exchange captured in Hail, Hail to Rock ën' Roll, Taylor Hackford's movie tribute to Chuck Berry. Said Bo: "I remember Alan Freed telling me about somebody throwing a brick through his window with a little note tied around it, saying he was gonna get run out of the neighborhood. And that was because he de-fied the system in playing our music. . . . It wasn't anything we were doing that was so wrong; people were slow to accept change, that's all.î
One of the most frequent accusations against Freed was that the music he broadcast with such enthusiasm encouraged delinquency and something at that time labeled "moral turpitude.î But the charge bore no credence for Freed, who in the court of public opinion--for a time, at least--was his own best advocate. "That's nonsense,î he said of the charge in a 1957 interview with the Daily Mirror's Sidney Fields. "It's outrageous that all teenagers in America should be indicted because of a few bunnies. Bunnies? That's my word for delinquents. Sure, there are always a few at my shows who'll flip lighted cigarettes from the balcony into the orchestra. But I know the kids who like the music and none of them are bunnies. No music is immoral. Rock ën' roll doesn't make kids delinquent. It keeps them from delinquency.î
Freed enjoyed immense success throughout the mid and late 50's. In addition to building a radio empire, he promoted rock ën' roll package tours in which he gave himself the boldest billing on the marquee. These shows created a sensation among the young all over the Northeast, and provided headaches in crowd control for local police departments. In sum, Freed had a hand--good, indifferent, or downright nefarious--in the careers of just about all of the northern black rock stars of the 1950's.
It was perhaps inevitable that the chief promoter and proselytizer for the listening revolution in rock ën' roll would eventually run afoul of powerful groups representative of more traditional tastes. Nor is there any question that some of his activities were, to put it mildly, contrary to the spirit of the law. Though never actually convicted in the notorious "Payolaî hearings of 1959, Freed was a principal witness, the one to whom the mud stuck, and ultimately he was forced to pay the piper: in 1962 he pleaded guilty to commercial bribery, at which time he also faced heavy fines for tax evasion. When he died shortly thereafter, he was reported to be broken and penniless, but his influence in brokering rock ën' roll, among it the music of Bo Diddley, had been pivotal.
Another man who took a chance with Bo's music at that time was Ed Sullivan. Bo Diddley's appearance on Sullivan's highly popular "Talk of the Townî show on November 17, 1955, was probably America's first nationally televised rock ën' roll performance. Certainly it was the first rock ën' roll delivered on national television by a black performer. In any case, it was an eventful night in other ways, as well.
Standing in front of the show's trademark satin drapes, Sullivan fumbled an introduction with barely concealed distaste: "And here to play this rr-wock and rr-wythm, or rr-wock and rr-woll thing is Mr. Bwo-dwiddle.î The music broadcast that night was unlike any rendition of "Bo Diddleyî heard before or since. Bo had in fact been asked at short notice to sing "Sixteen Tons,î a song at that time unknown to him, and although willing at first, he eventually rebelled when he found the prompt cards unreadable from the distance they were being held. Seeing through the thick lenses of his glasses the words "Bo Diddleyî at the top of the card, Bo took them to mean the song rather than his name, and happily went ahead and pumped out his hit, to Mr. Sullivan's evident displeasure. More to the point, however, Bo had earlier been counseled by CBS staffers to "standardizeî his delivery. Normally laid-back, heavily black, and unrepentantly urban, Bo's voiceprint that night was light, white, and waspish--the whole effect was totally un-Diddley.
Watching a video of that performance recently for the first time, Bo was taken with amazement. "Hell, shoot! Listen to that voice on me!î he chortles. "Normally we never played it that fast. They had me making all kinda crazy changes to my song!î As laid down by drummer Clifton James, the tempo was an amazing, pinpoint, tom-tom pattern, more like a ripple than anything else, but Bo--who had dressed himself and the band in snazzy red jackets with black velvet collars--never missed a beat, and his smooth runs and trills on his large white Gretsch guitar were sheer rock ën' roll poetry.
Afterwards came the shock of learning that he and his band were playing for nothing, even though Bo had a payment check right there in his hand. "They gave me something like seven hundred dollars for the show, maybe a little more--good bread in those days. Then the dude who gave me the check in the first place told me I had to give it back! ëSign it, then give it back'--that's what he said. I couldn't understand it. I said, ëWhat kinda crap is this? I'm top of the bill.' Dude says, ëIt's a formality.' So I gave the check back, but I couldn't make any sense of it, except later when I heard what they paid Elvis on the same show, and that started telling me what was black and what was white.î
For all its bizarre nature, however, his appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show was the beginning of something dramatic, just as later appearances would be for Elvis in the following year and for the Beatles in 1964. "Things really took off after that show,î declared Bo, "but there was one funky area: television. For a long while I hardly got any TV work, and I always wonder to this day whether Ed Sullivan had me blacklisted. When I came off stage, he said, ëYou're the first guy to ever cross me up on a song,' and he was mad. So it made me wonder.î
Bo had another major engagement in New York that week, and it too would prove to be a milestone: for himself, for the theatre where he was playing, and for a young singer named Elvis Presley. Following the summertime success of his first record, Bo had been enrolled that fall as the headliner for Dr. Jive's Rhythm and Blues revue, a package show created by WWRL deejay Tommy "Dr. Jiveî Smalls. Appearing on the same bill with Bo were such rising or established stars as Bill "Honky Tonkî Doggett, Etta James, and Dakota Stanton. After a whirlwind tour of the south, the show was booked for a week's run at the world-famous Apollo Theatre, advertised--as always--as being "in the heart of friendly Harlem.î
For Bo Diddley, Harlem turned out to be a friendly place indeed. Armies of fans poured out to see what was probably the best R & B line-up of the year. And in particular they came to see Bo, to hear his pounding rhythms, and to witness the fleet footwork and pelvic dancing that one commentator called a "sexual spectacle.î Spectacle or not, Bo's performance was seductive enough to break the all-time attendance record for the Apollo Theatre and to impress even Bobby Schiffman, then the owner of the Apollo, who, as far as theatrical excitement was concerned, thought he had seen it all.
"I remember the first time we had Bo Diddley in the theatre,î he recalled in a conversation with Ted Fox, author of Showtime at the Apollo. I thought we were gonna have an uprising. The music was so stimulating to everybody, including me, that it was whipping everybody into a frenzy. They never heard anything like that. It was just a complete new, different style of singing. Rock and roll's main ingredient was the beat, and [Bo] was the leading exponent of that. To him melody meant nothing, lyrics meant nothing, it was the beat that was infectious. That would drive you crazy. He really set the place on fire.î
Another member of that very same Apollo audience was the twenty-year-old Elvis Presley. Up to that date, Presley had not yet emerged as the national singing sensation whose name would become synonymous with instant fame, wealth and adulation. The rise of his first gold record, "Heartbreak Hotel,î was still several months away. However, he had already garnered regional attention, and it was this that had sent him on his first trip to New York to do recording work with his new label, RCA Victor, at its studios in Rockefeller Center. The fabulous "Don't Be Cruel,î the biggest hit of the following year, was one of the products of those sessions. But Elvis was still able, perhaps for the last time ever, to walk unrecognized in public. Between sessions, he strolled along Forty-Second Street and around Times Square where--the photographic record confirms--he bought himself (or his sweetheart) a diamond ring. Then, he went to the Apollo.
As reported by Ted Fox, Elvis sat every night that week among the Apollo audience or stood in the wings, "transfixed by. . .the dancing and prancingî of Bo Diddley, the rhythm and blues master. "Watching Bo Diddley charge up the Apollo crowd,î writes Fox, "undoubtedly had a profound effect on him. When he returned to New York a few months later for his first national television appearance. . . Elvis shocked the country with his outrageous hip-shaking performance, and the furor that followed made him an American sensation.î
Bo is laconic about his purported influence on Elvis whose work he has always praised. He has often told those who have questioned him, "If Elvis copied me, I don't care. More power to him, I'm not starving.î The reaction on the part of some to Elvis's imitative dancing was instant condemnation. But if you watch early clips of his performances--his appearance on the Milton Berle show in April, 1957, is a good example--it's difficult to see what the fuss was about. It's also difficult to see any connection to Bo's movements of the time which, though lascivious and comic, are practised and flowing. By contrast, Elvis lacked fluidity, and his legs twisted and jerked in a jolting, spastic fashion. All the same, it made girls scream--that, apparently, was the main thing--and by October 24, 1956, Elvis had become a millionaire.
"I knew he was there,î says Bo of the episode at the Apollo. "Sometimes he was out front, then once they brought him backstage to watch. But no one brought him over for an introduction or to shake my hand. At first I thought it was one of Schiffman's funky relatives, hangin' in the corner! When I found out it was Elvis Presley, I said, ëShoot, he has to be crazy to be hangin' out in Harlem!î
"I agree that the cat was awesome; his performance was really great, and he made a dent in rock ën' roll. But they tried to hang the beginnings of rock ën' roll on him, and there's no way that can be claimed. There were plenty of cats before him, and one of ëem was me, else why was he studying me?î
It was, then, a strange crossing of paths that autumn week at the Apollo in 1955: Bo and Elvis, fellow Mississippians, yet (if truth be told) worlds apart. One a native son, the other a son of a gun, each of whom, with other performers of their time, were sowing the seeds of a cultural pluralism that America had previously ignored or denied. Bo and Elvis: born in a segregated South, yet joined at the hip, you might say.
"I met Elvis only one other time, about fifteen years later in Vegas, a few years before he died. We were passing one another on the street, and we spoke for a quick second. They were ushering him off somewhere. They stayed on that boy like he was the King of England--made a total hermit out of him--and if that's what success is, then I don't want it.
"Now some people say that Elvis is coming back! Well, they say that about Jesus--and he may come back--but Elvis ain't comin'. If Elvis comes up here, then I'm leaving!î
Once Bo had entered the Chesses' pasture, Len and Phil were not about to let the grass grow under his feet, and they brought him into the recording studio continuously throughout the year. Confident of their product, they produced Bo's second record on May 10, 1955, precisely one day before his first record was available to the public. The efforts of that second session--îDiddley Daddyî and "She's Fine, She's Mineî (the latter used on the soundtrack of the Tom Cruise/Paul Newman movie, "The Hustlerî)--were to give Bo his second top fifteen R & B hit in succession, this despite one of the sloppiest engineering jobs in Chess history.
"Diddley Daddyî is once again--naturally--about a cat named Bo Diddley, but this time the song concerns the carryings-on of Bo's girlfriend who just last night stole a kiss from another man. But she is repentant, and the praise for the Diddley figure is put this time in the mouth of the girl, who "cries in vainî that Bo Diddley, you know, is "a nat'ral-born man.î The Moonglows, a famous doo-wop group, help Bo carry the song along, blending their vocal harmonies to ease the harsher tones of Bo's lead. It says much about the Chess brothers' regard for Bo's rock and roll talent that they were willing to back him with their premier group, for the Moonglows--led by the incomparable voice of Harvey Fuqua--were already chartmakers in their own right, their smooth little number called "Sincerelyî representing the first real success that Chess records had been able to achieve up to then on a national scale.
The bouncy "Diddley Daddyî is remarkable in another sense. From the opening notes it is apparent that here is something new and unusual in the realm of guitar playing, not so much in the rhythm as in the tone and the texture, which stands out as heavily tremoloed. This magnified tremolo gives a round and echoing effect, lush and strong, and represents something that became a distinctive feature of Bo's overall sound. "I built that thing that gave me the tremolo sound myself.î says Bo. "I used to go down there to this Army store in Chicago, down on 22nd Street, used to be a surplus place. You could buy all sorts of relays and stuff, and eventually I had it figured out. After a while the guitar companies started making them in the factory and so I started using theirs instead of my own. But the idea, you see, was to add an extra buzz, another vibration, on top of the sound other fellas could get out of the electric guitar.î
"Diddley Daddyî also demonstrates Bo's radically unorthodox tuning. Bo is the inheritor of the type of tuning called "openî tuning, a style common among acoustic players from the Mississippi Delta, but when performed on Bo's electric guitar, it becomes a startling innovation. "When I started to play professionally, I continued to tune the guitar the way I did when I was a kid,î explains Bo. "Nowadays my sound is not really like that of other guitar players, ëcause I've experimented so much. I call my tuning ëA Variety of Religions' ëcos it's got a little bit of everything! Fact is, I found out my tuning has a name: Sebastopol tuning. Usually other musicians find it easy to play along with me if they can transpose a little bit.î
John de Witt, who is active as both a classical bass player and as a rock bassist, has had plenty of experience in what it is like to play with Bo, and of the adjustments in tuning that this demands. "The first time I played with him I was with the Charlie Frazier Band at a college spring break affair. We went out on stage and there was a Hammond B-3 amplifier there, and we just plugged into it. We tuned up, went through the whole sound check; we took a lot of care, got the organ in tune and everything else. Then Bo came out, and at the first note he played, we all went, ëOh heck!' Nowhere close to where Bo was! But even so Bo sounded right. He's got that whole ëout-of-tune' quality. It wouldn't be Bo Diddley without it. It's just such a heavy-duty sound.î
Fred Sokolow, who has written Bo Diddley Guitar Solos, the first detailed survey of Bo's guitar style, explains how other guitarists can achieve similar results to Bo's. "When you re-tune the guitar to an ëopen tuning' you can play a tonic chord by strumming the ëopen' (unfretted) strings. [In his early recordings] Bo Diddley almost always re-tunes to an open E chord; occasionally he uses the open D tuning which is identical to the open E but two frets (a whole step) lower. He plays the same chord fingerings and scale patterns in both tunings. . . . Many early blues guitarists used the open D and E tunings [but] Bo Diddley's guitar style is truly unique and distinctive.î
Bo's sense of innovation led him, in fact, to re-examine almost every aspect of the electric guitar as an instrument. He indulged, for instance, in unprecedented levels of amplification (his sister, Lucille, says she can only enjoy Bo's concerts when she has cotton wool in her ears), and he has been known to slit the cones of his speakers with razor blades for greater reverberation. He used the electronic manipulation of tone for a whole range of special effects, finding he could incorporate reverberation and feedback into the totality of his sound in ways Jimi Hendrix, to whom these innovations are generally attributed, was not to discover for another ten years. He also attempted unusual picking and fingering techniques, such as running the pick up or down a given string (standard fare nowadays for most rockers or heavy metal players), or playing overhand like a steel guitarist.
Although the work that he committed to the Chess master tapes during 1955--such numbers as "You Don't Love Me (You Don't Care),î "Pretty Thing,î "Diddy Wah Diddy,î and "Dancing Girlî--were all classics of innovation, it was really the opening bars of "Diddley Daddyî (the same bars later imitated note-for-note with devastating effect by Brian Jones on the Rolling Stones' first big hit) that were the earliest announcement to the music world of Bo's natural inclination to experimentation and of the development of what he was later to call his "own bag of tricks.î It is this bag that sets him so apart from other guitarists.
As Bo recalls it, when he walked into the studio the day he cut "Diddley Daddy,î he did not particularly notice the well-groomed man of about his own age who was then talking to Leonard Chess about a home-made tape he wanted Chess to hear of a song called "Ida Red.î But the svelte visitor noticed Bo, and being from other parts, he may have marveled a little at Bo's bold Windy City stride and his purse-lipped, stony stare. At that moment Chess was instructing his secretary to set up a recording date for the man a few weeks hence. "Your name, sir?î she asked. "Chuck Berry,î came the smooth reply.
"Even today,î says Bo, "there's people who don't believe that Chuck Berry and me are friends. Sure, Chuckie has his moods, but then when I'm in one of my bags nobody can talk to me either! True, in the beginning Chuck wouldn't talk to people that much. He was like a loner, but everybody had their little bit of professional jealousy for the other guy; nothing wrong in that. I admire the man, you know, because had I been as sharp as him maybe I would have some of what he has!î
"Nowadays they talk a lot about his moods. I can't say that he's miserable; I can't say that he's happy; but I feel that he's comfortable. I'm pretty sure he got robbed like me, but he sold more records than Bo Diddley. He doesn't have to work any more; he works because he has fans. Me, I got to work!î
Bo's friendship with Chuck Berry took a while to develop, and there were good reasons for that. Bo and Chuck came from markedly different backgrounds, and there may have been a certain wariness on the part of each towards the other: Bo of Chuck's sophistication, Chuck of Bo's rawness. In addition, it's obvious they approached the art of music-making in distinctly different ways. But the idea that there was ever a personal feud between Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry is vigorously disavowed by both. "Whoever the dude was who wrote that up, told the biggest lie ever,î says Bo angrily. Of Bo, Chuck will say with the greatest emphasis, "He is a man who is truly a friend of mine!î
To be sure, when Chuck Berry returned to the Chess studios on May 21, 1955, to turn "Ida Redî into his immortal "Maybelline,î it would signal the beginnings of a professional rivalry as he and Bo went head to head in the R & B charts throughout the rest of 1955 and the following year. But as Chess labelmates their names would become synonymous with two of the best and most exciting styles in rock and roll. There is poetic irony to the fact that when their music was first introduced in quantity to British listeners a few years later, their names were conjoined in the title of a series of extended play records that were issued simply as "Chuck and Bo, Vol 1,î "Chuck and Bo, Vol 2,î etc.
In artistic terms, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley were possessed from the beginning by two very different kinds of imagination. Chuck Berry, the product of a stable environment (from which, he confesses, he willfully strayed on occasion), celebrated the act of being young in America. From his mid to late twenties and then beyond, he wrote of teenhood, of high school life and partying, and of loving girls who are admirable in every respect save for their unattainability. The brilliance of Chuck Berry derived from his creation of classic cameos of a life not quite wholly white, not wholly black either, but composed of something like a color-free, carefree model of Utopian adolescence. To a high degree, his was a vicarious vision, yet delightfully so.
Bo Diddley, by contrast, wrote out of life as he actually experienced it, life in the immediate moment. Much more accustomed than Chuck to the presence of threat in his daily existence, he has extolled arrogance and the creation of self-assurance, qualities necessary to face down neighborhood menace ("I'm Badî), social rejection ("I'm a Manî), or an angry woman ("Before You Accuse Meî). Thus his early output hinted at a violent, almost cut-throat world, that could be redeemed only by unexpected good luck, good sex, or ghetto humor ("But that chick looked so ugly, she had to sneak up on the glass to get a drink of water!î)
Berry's initial range was broad: jazz licks, ballads, country and western, traditional blues (the last of which Phil Chess often relegated to the B side of a Berry release); his style--both vocal and instrumental--was crisp and polished, lean and sparkling, his every musical phrase crafted to the utmost. His originality went hand in hand with a strong commercial sensibility. But Bo Diddley wrote more instinctively--free of deliberate artifice--his songs rendered in tight, robust imagery and phrasing, punctuated with inventive sonic effects ("Monaî), relying on a bombardment of sound ("Pretty Thingî), or strung out on a necklace of improvisation ("Bo's Guitarî). Less expansive than Chuck's in its melodic terms of reference, Bo's early music nevertheless exhibited a spontaneous, unforced fluidity.
Yet for all their differences, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley were providing one thing in common, the rich soil from which succeeding generations of music-makers would be able to reap lucrative harvests. Today, there is a sense of brotherhood between Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, a pride in the other's accomplishments and in the giant legacy that they jointly leave to popular music.
Bo feels that this same legacy also belongs in part to the brothers, Phil and Leonard Chess. "They took the risk, man. People wouldn't even bother with our stuff until Chess took a chance on Chuck Berry and Little Walter and John Lee Hooker and Bo Diddley. That was the beginnings of rock and roll music and Chess was right in the thick of it. They should be recognized for that; they deserve that honor.î
The evidence seems to be mounting, however, that the Chess set's outward show of success masked a long history of troubled relationships with many of its artists. While there are some who have never complained--among the early stars Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon, for instance, appear to have accepted the Chess style with equanimity--Bo has repeatedly expressed his reservations about the fairness of the financial distributions he received from Chess. In fact, it has become a point of honor with him to present his side of the picture at every possible opportunity.
"Your first impression was they seemed like nice guys, but you couldn't tell. Phil was what we call the strong-arm man, and Leonard was the brains behind the shit, and together they was dangerous! Leonard Chess on his own was more dangerous with a pen in his hand than a man with a sub-machine gun!
"They never made me any promises. We had a standard contract, which I found out later was a CON-tract, y'understand what I'm saying? It was like Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox: Brer Rabbit trusted him, y'understand, ëcause Brer Fox told him he was a friend, but what happened? Brer Rabbit damn near got ate up! And it's the same concept, you know: ëC'mon in, heh, heh. . . come on in and sit down and have dinner, heh, heh!' And the cat in the back of the store his eyes light up and he's trying to figure out where to hit you first. This is exactly the way I look at it. See, during this time, back then, it was like that for black cats who wanted to record--we were having it bad enough tryin' to get somebody to listen to us, let alone tryin' to figure out how to keep up with the money part of it. None of us guys knew anything abut the business and I don't think the guys like Leonard Chess knew much about the damn business either, as far as I'm concerned. But all they had to do was to know how not to pay us!
"It's the same as it is with any other business. You got to trust somebody: that's what it all amounts to, you got to take somebody's word about how much money came in. I figure the government should've gotten involved in the record business when it started gettin' big. Oh yeah, somebody would have hollered ëDictatorship,' but who gives a shit. At least the artist would probably get something of what was due him.
"Otis Spann, The Moonglows, Bobby Lester--it was like a big family, man. But we didn't feel we were gonna end up with nothin'. Everybody's saying the same thing I'm saying. We got robbed because we trusted people. The only thing that Leonard Chess was good for was asking real quick: ëYou wanna new car? A Cadillac?' Y' know. Most of us we were old country boys to start with or out of the ghetto, cats who were runnin' around who'd never had nothing, so that sort of shit sounded good. But I ended up paying for the cars they gave me ninety-five times.
"How they did you was easy, ëcause if they showed you the books you didn't know what the hell you was looking at! You didn't know the hell what was going on, because they'd show you a book for you. The real books you'd never see! I think they had three sets of books. When Len died he left his family with millions, oh yeah. He left the whole outfit to Marshall, his nephew. And what happened to me? I'm still working! But the bottom line is--and I go back and say it again--that you gotta trust somebody to give you the right figures. I'm looking to them for income, but they'd tell me, ëDon't watch us. Watch your booking agency.'
"The only thing I could sense was that they were playing a game, a game of ëCatch me if you can.' Then they'd say shit like, ëSue me, if you think we're beating you!. How'm I gonna sue ëem? I ain't even got enough money to go to a damn lawyer, you dig. I read somewhere where Marshall says I was always walking in and asking for a spot. Well, I'd have been a fool if I didn't ëcause Chess never sent me a check in the mail for royalties, and I'll eat my hat--boil it and eat it--if it's otherwise!î
Originally, it had never been Bo's intention to rely entirely on the Chess operation for oversight of his career. His first thought had been to invite his brother Kenneth, who he believed was about to begin a promising career as a semi-pro baseball player, to be his manager and "to look after the money side of things.î But on his first road trip, Bo got some unexpected news. Travelling with his band in his 1949 Mercury Zephyr, he made a quick dash home to Magnolia while en route between gigs in Memphis and Montgomery. He was looking forward to telling his mother about his new career, but it was Kenneth's new vocation that was most on Momma Ethel's mind. Momma Ethel told him, "Your brother Kenneth isn't gonna follow you anywhere; he's a Preacher now!î Minutes later, Kenneth himself walked in and confirmed the news.
"It was a race between Bo, the baseball scouts, and the Lord, as to who would get my services!î laughs Kenneth. "I used to eat, sleep and breathe baseball--just like Bo and his music--and I was invited to trials at baseball camp. Well, that was just one Sunday before the Lord told me to give up baseball. If Bo had come just a few months earlier, I would have had a much harder decision to make, but I'd just told the Lord I'd played my last game, and I gave all my equipment away except my glove, which I gave to Bo. The Sunday after that, Bo came and asked me to be his manager, the scouts came by for me again, but I was already on my way to church with my Bible, going to Sunday School!î
"I understood his decision,î says Bo, "and it was a good decision, too. He doesn't think I know it, but I know it, that he was praying for me all the time and that his prayers have been with me ever since.î
So, right from the beginning Bo was working essentially without management, and being unfamiliar with the music business he looked to the Chess people for guidance. Again, he has mixed feelings about the way his record company handled this side of his career. "They had no idea about my talent ëcause first of all I gave them, ëDah, dah, doo-dum'--that's all they were interested in, and they kept me in a spot like that for years. I should have been movin' on to other things. Like, ëHere's the chance now to branch out,' they could've said, or, ëWhat else can you do, man?' And if ever I suggested something different, something out of the slot they put me in, I was told, ëYou don't need to do that. What for? You don't know how to do that.' I used to hear that all the time at Chess.î
Though he can still get animated on the subject of Chess business practices, Bo's resentment is nowadays only a shadow of what it once was, and he appears to be on the verge of putting it out of his mind altogether and supplanting it with a more positive recollection. "But would you believe it, they're kinda inspiring me today,î he continues, "because I figured if they could make a success of it, then sure as hell so could I. Like now I've got my own little production company started, something I should have done years ago. I intend to find fresh talent, give young people a hand, a chance to show what they've got. And I'll give ëem everything they got coming to ëem.
"Yeah, brothers can be tight, and Phil and Len Chess weren't no exception. I take my hat off to them for giving me a chance to be Bo Diddley, you understand, but I don't fancy what they did to us--to me and a lot of other entertainers.
"Now I look back at it, I figure God was looking down and saying to me, ëYou ain't ready to handle the money yet.' But I must admit, I'm running out of patience!î