Bo Diddley!

has anybody mentioned "You Can't Judge A Book By It's Cover"?

Just think of Bo manning that movie camera...

yeah, I understood that. I mean minstrelsy was the basis for modern american culture, certainly pop music as we know it. so there were minstrel shows up until the '50s? you mean what, the rabbit foot minstrels or something? big stage shows with cakewalks and white and black folks blacking up their faces? i don't know, i'd like to know what these were. again, my understanding is that minstrelsy was over by the '20s. please enlighten me, i'm interested in this subject having read tosches' "dead voices gather" and the excellent, excellent book by dave wondrich "stomp and swerve."

Another ace song: Doing the Crawdaddy. The best parts are his comments to the kids, like "you lookin' good - you been eatin' regular?"

"She Wasn't Raped"????

Does anyone have any info on this? Google and s1sk don't. I'd like to hear it, but would be happy just to read the lyrics.

Although I love most of his stuff, my favorite song performed by Bo is "Can't Judge a Book By Its Cover". Great lyrics (written by Willie Dixon) delivered with Bo's style.

that just needs to be repeated.

the robert palmer notes to the box set are great but that thing's a beast...hasn't been repackaged to a more manageable size since it arrived 15 years ago.

Everything anyone ever needs to know is in "Pretty Thing"!

I would not be so sure. My brother saw him many years back and said Bo just coasted through a show (and I think he, as Chuck Berry does, just used a local pickup band).

To Huk-L: Yes, see him! I've seen him twice in the last few years. He's lost a few toes to diabetes and can't dance anymore, but it was still really great to see him. And yeah, he doesn't have his own band and the hired hands just do a really basic Bo Beat the whole time, but he's Bo fuckin' Diddley fer pete's sake. If Jesus were playing my local casino, I wouldn't expect him to do all the fish-multiplication and water to wine business, I'd just be stoked to see JC in real life. Ditto Bo.

And the best part of the last Bo show I saw: Apropos of nothing (I think he was in the middle of a twenty minute rap detailing his plans to steal my girlfriend) he goes "I'm a Rock'n'Roll Vampire! Nyyeeep! Nyyyyeeep!"

Bo, no doubt.

Fuck Chuck Berry; Bo Diddley is not only the father of all that's wonderful in rock-n-roll hence, but every worthy pop posture is traceable directly back to the man in a lineage that cannot but shame his generations-removed students.

TS: Chuck Berry's "Maybelline" vs. Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love"

according to Etta James, Bo filmed 8mm pornographic movies of his fellow R n B stars "in action."

somehow i doubt this was mentioned at the funeral.

hey -- i started this thread! more than five years ago!

BRING IT ON HOME
BRING IT TO JEROME

The Bo Diddley compilation Tales From the Funk Dimension 1970-73 that is on Raven is a good listen. I heard some tracks off of Bo's record "Black Gladiator" from 1970 on Youtube and thought they sounded really cool. None of those early 70s records have really been issued on CD much, but this comp was out there. It's a solid compilation all the way through, real funky and the early stuff is really unhinged. I'd love to have saw him live back then.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbRaBxSGIoc

Our old pal Timi Yuro was otm

I love this story, surprised it's not in the thread:

On November 20, 1955, he appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, a popular television variety show, where he infuriated the host. "I did two songs and he got mad," Bo Diddley later recalled. "Ed Sullivan said that I was one of the first colored boys to ever double-cross him. Said that I wouldn't last six months". The show had requested that he sing the Merle Travis-penned Tennessee Ernie Ford hit "Sixteen Tons", but when he appeared on stage, he sang "Bo Diddley" instead. This substitution resulted in his being banned from further appearances.

The request came about because Sullivan's people heard Diddley casually singing "Sixteen Tons" in the dressing room. Diddley's accounts of the event were inconsistent.[21]

Diddley was an excellent story teller whose stories varied from time to time, however, Diddley contended to friends and family that he was not trying to double-cross Sullivan and attributed the "misunderstanding" to the fact that; when he saw "Bo Diddley" on a cue card, he was under the impression he was to perform two songs, "Bo Diddley" and "Sixteen Tons".

I'm really frustyrated that i still haven't managed to find that Raven Tales From The Funk Dimension compi somebody else mentions somewhere above, not seen it in a couple of years.

Other than that I keep being impressed by how some of his tracks must have sounded like the meeting point between futuristic sound and deep ancient African stuff when they were first heard. Keep getting flashes of that when I hear Mona come up on my walkman. Guitars sound like streamlined tailfins or something. I'm also struck by the idea for the timeless minutes you're listening to that track you're not that distant from where QMS took it & the template for their treatment of the track seems to be already there in the track, they just stayed out there in freeflight a bit longer. Freeflight is already present in Bo though. like aerodynamic capturing of light or something else I'm having trouble expressing if that issn't coming across.

Give me a second, I'll figure this out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGa7Qs291VM

Nice

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_l_hdhuAseKuf518cr4z3Wc7pDP9Xiv-50

"Look at Grandma what you tryin to do"

is this the best thing he did after his 50s-60s heyday? I like this one a whole lot all the way through, but some of the other stuff I’ve heard from the 70s didn’t quite match up.

THe turn of the 70s funk stuff is quite good in places. The Raven set of that stuff was pretty solid not 100% sure about all of the individual lps.

that weird guitar break in "hey jerome" is one of the funkiest things ever

yeah I love that sort of metallic percussive thing he’s doing throughout.