Bo Diddley!

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.

I can't find the article, but an RS profile with Bo from a couple of years before his death briefly mentioned the music he was making in his home studio. It was described as mostly synth- and drum machine-based and Bo said something like, "And nobody's ever gonna hear it."

my little bo project:

https://twitter.com/BoDiddleyBeat

whoa, good call on Sound and Vision, never would have thought of that

From The Funk Dimension comp

I don't think the individual albums are that hard to find on vinyl....? here's one of the albums on the comp

they are really fun records

(xp) thanks! i'm discovering lots of songs i never would've thought of before i started doing this. it's pretty much a bottomless well.

here's another one

Life-affirming

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFpv1LKrA9s

Couple friends met Bo Diddley at a show shortly before his stroke and said he wouldn't shut up about this "synth orchestra" idea. Sorta wanna hear what that sounded like. Surely not good, but I wonder why he was so excited about it.

From The Funk Dimension comp

I don't think the individual albums are that hard to find on vinyl....? here's one of the albums on the comp

they are really fun records

― his girlfriend was all 'ugh and he wears a solar backpack' (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, March 25, 2013 9:08 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

POint is, I bought it when it came out and should have it somewhere in this flat. I spent a week or so going through most of my cds a few months ago specifically looking for it and still couldn't turn it up. Hence the frustration. Wondering in fact if I should grab another copy.

his guitar tone in that youtube clip is soooo raw. love it. what is that from? feel like I've seen it before...

This is my favourite, just the sounds he gets from his guitar.
"What you say, quit mumblin and talk out loud"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEfz9VfFOKQ

I have super super vague memories of hearing a late 80s or early 90s Bo album on Triple X Records that was basically guitar and drum machine, and I think the lyrics were pretty Jesus-y. No more detailed memories of it, though. Anybody else heard the record I'm thinking of?

Here it is; it's called Breakin' Through the B.S..

my little bo project:
https://twitter.com/BoDiddleyBeat
― fact checking cuz, Monday, March 25, 2013 4:59 PM (2 hours ago)

I went downstairs and checked an old file folder of all the songlists for mix-tapes I once made for friends; was hoping to find one from the mid-'80s that had Bo-Diddley-beat songs on one side ("Not Fade Away" the most obvious example) and "Louie, Louie"-riff songs on the other. I thought I'd saved them all, but I guess a few got away.

his guitar tone in that youtube clip is soooo raw. love it. what is that from? feel like I've seen it before...

It's from a 1973 concert movie called Let the Good Times Roll

yeah I love that clip. I like the way the band does a kind of early 70s boogie take on the diddley beat too

an RS profile with Bo from a couple of years before his death briefly mentioned the music he was making in his home studio. It was described as mostly synth- and drum machine-based and Bo said something like, "And nobody's ever gonna hear it."

https://soundcloud.com/comeme/bo-jack-vocal-version

at what point does bo diddley get bad?

or to rephrase the question, so far i've made my way through the 1957-1962 recordings and it has been like 100% great ... where next?

Imo he's great up through the 70s funk stuff

so far my favorite has been "have guitar will travel" (the one where he's on the scooter on the cover)

"I'm High Again" is great, and that's 1967

bo diddley is the best music

I picked up "The Definitive Collection" this year and it's so much fun! So primal, it just cuts so deeply.

One of my three or four favourite live clips ever. The women are incredible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeZHB3ozglQ

Yeah, wow, that rules!

yup

The great grand-pappy was a busy man
Cooked his grub in a fryin' pan
Picked his teeth with a huntin' knife
He wore the same suit all-a his life
Oh-oh, ooo-oh-ooo, ooo-ooo
A-ay-oh

http://sheshredsmag.com/lady-bo-mother-of-rock-n-roll-dead-at-76-years-old/
Peggy Jones aka Lady Bo, played guitar with Bo from 1957 to 1962

Never made it down to Ponderosa Stomp the year (or years?) she performed

Is that her in the clip just above?