Bo Diddley

By Josh Tyrangiel

Apportioning credit for the invention of rock 'n' roll among Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and a few other pioneers has always been a challenge. Suffice it to say that Bo Diddley, who died at 79 in his home in Archer, Fla., never thought he got enough--and he was right.

Born Otha Ellas Bates in Mississippi, Diddley moved to Chicago as a child and learned to make violins and guitars in vocational school before dropping out to play music. When Chess Records showed an interest, a harmonica player supposedly suggested the stage name Bo Diddley, slang for a bowlegged fool. A few days later, Diddley made his first professional recording, Bo Diddley; it rocketed to No. 1 on the Billboard R&B chart and introduced the world to rock's defining rhythm, the Bo Diddley "hambone" beat--bum-bum-bum, bum bum--that's fueled everything from Buddy Holly's Not Fade Away to U2's Desire to the White Stripes' Screwdriver.

Diddley also gave birth to a rock-'n'-roll persona--the baaaad man. "I walk 47 miles of barbed wire. I use a cobra snake for a necktie," he sang on Who Do You Love. Even though Diddley could sound tough, he was funnier than his peers and more progressive too, employing a series of female musicians at a time when rock was predominantly male. Despite his influence on the Rolling Stones and the Clash, Diddley was rarely credited as one of rock 'n' roll's creators--or paid like one--a fact, he admitted, that made him bitter. But his influence has been acknowledged by contemporary musicians, from the Raconteurs, who cover Who Do You Love, to Mos Def, who rapped, "Elvis Presley ain't got no soul/ Bo Diddley is rock 'n' roll."