May Record Club - Bo Diddley, "Bo Diddley"

Bo Diddley, champion of naming songs after himself:

"Bo Diddley" - A play on the nursery rhyme, no reason for the title except for being the first track. Love that resonating. I wonder if this was actually recorded/released before the other singles here?

"I'm a Man" - I actually had to look up to see who did it first - Muddy Waters' had the response, but this is a play on the Willie Dixon-Muddy Waters original. I think I prefer the more drawn-out "Mannish Boy".

"Bring It to Jerome" - Very different, a sustained note and a dual vocal. Relatively subdued. Who is this other singer? I looked it up: Jerome Green, who often played the foil. Learned something new today.

"Before You Accuse Me" - Suck it Clapton, your cover brought nothing to the table. The most straight blues yet. Nice closing instrumental.

"Hey! Bo Diddley" - That's the beat.

"Dearest Darling" - John Fogerty maybe listened to this intro right before writing "Down on the Corner".

"Hush Your Mouth" - The beat. Those toms are pretty cool. I like the pronunciation "hersh ya mouf".

"Say, Boss Man" - Rock n' roll plus doo-wop. Good story, good wail complemented by backing chorus.

"Diddley Daddy" - Dig that little harmonica in back, sounds like a flugelhorn or something before it comes to the center.

"Diddy Wah Diddy" - No it's not Manfred Mann. Pretty nonsensical song, really.

"Who Do You Love?" - Just great lyrics. I want a cobra snake necktie. I've heard the original more than once before, but from classic rock radio I've heard the George Thorogood cover many more times. The cover is narrowly superior mainly because it incorporates the Bo Diddley resonance that doesn't actually appear in the original, and Thorogood's voice is deeper.

"Pretty Thing" - Kind of feels like the Bo Diddley version of the teen-idol pablum that came out later after 1959, except it rocks and has the best rendition of the resonance on the compilation.

You've been listening to Bo Diddley all wrong. That's all right, everybody's been listening to Bo Diddley wrong. Heck, I've been listening to Bo Diddley wrong.

He never really took for me, and I'm a blues-loving, early rock'n'roll-loving type. I'd read about him some. I picked up a cheap incomplete 12-song anthology about 25 years ago (a bootleg?), and I assumed its washy sound was the sign of bad mastering. A few years later I saw him live at the King's Rook Club in Erie, PA, a fun show in a terrific venue. But I didn't hear much of that beat everybody talked about, that hard-pounding "shave and a haircut" rhythm that had been appropriated by CCR, Bob Seger, and Bruce Springsteen. I had a few favorite songs, but I set him aside, confused by the hype.

A couple of weeks ago I went to this album with newly fresh ears.  Half of the songs were on that cheap CD from all those years ago, and they're not that much cleaner now. But now that I'm armed with a bit more knowledge of the era, I've got some context.

The big thing I had to get beyond is that the beat is not what everyone says it is. That sharp, defined rhythm of Bob Seger's live cover of "Bo Diddley" and Bruce Springsteen's "She's the One" - that's not on these recordings. I assumed it was a result of the mastering compounded by the limitations of the era's recording equipment. But that's not true - scrawny Buddy Holly pounded with more force on "Not Fade Away" and "Peggy Sue," and Elvis Presley shrugged and mumbled through the more assertive rhythm of "Treat Me Nice." Just listen to Bo's Chess label mates - Muddy Waters's "I Just Want to Make Love to You," Little Walter's "Mellow Down Easy," Chuck Berry's "Maybellene," and, most of all, Howlin' Wolf's "Forty-Four." Those cats rocked hard and low.

Listen again, starting with Bo's signature song. It takes a while for Bo's guitar strumming to latch onto the famous rhythm, and his guitar has a choked, clucking sound. It doesn't even drive the rhythm bed. There's another louder, deeper sounding guitar with heavy reverberation, throbbing at a different rhythm. The drummer is louder, but he's playing a different pattern - frankly, he's not convincingly consistent, either. The dominant rhythm is coming from Jerome's maracas, and that's a clear straight shuffle. What results is a strange melange of rhythms, surprisingly light, but bubbling, a bit mysterious.  This happens over and over in different combinations throughout this collection of songs. There are a few straight blues songs like "Before You Accuse Me," but their appeal comes from a different place.

There's something significant going on outside of the rhythm. Bo's voice doesn't have the deepness or growl you might expect from his reputation and influence. Where Muddy Water's "Mannish Boy" is slow and menacing - you don't want to get in the way of this man's hard-on - Bo's "I'm a Man" shows his voice cracking a bit - he's trying to convince us. I always heard Bo's version as the lesser, but hearing the raw vulnerability in his voice fills out the picture. He sounds like a poor kid from down south proving himself to his friends, his rivals, his woman, his audience. Like his square guitar, and his hat with the medallion, Bo's voice strives to impress, and if it's not a 100% success, the effort is winning. He's bragging, but he's not boasting, and we let him get away with it.

The lyrics and melody amplify the effect. Sometimes he's just joking, but he's so damn funny. "Bo Diddley, Bo Diddley had a farm / And on that farm he had some women / Women here, women there / Women, women, women everywhere." Sure you did, Bo. I was surprised that Jerome only has one spotlight on this album - my CD had two other much funnier songs "Say Man" and "Cops and Robbers."

Take Bo's sincere but humorous persona, set it against the clowning sideman Jerome, and plop them down the crosscurrents of rhythm, and I hear the birth of funk. In spirit it often sounds more like George Clinton's bands than the often stogy white artists who have claimed the rhythm. It's more good-natured than you would expect from most Chess Records artists, which is why you never hear Bo classified as "blues."

I do want to praise what remains my favorite Bo Diddley track. Beneath the pounding drum and repetitive nearly-Latin two-chord piano riff, "Dearest Darling" is an intense proclamation of love. In between howls of the title, and other wordless, guttural sounds, he pledges his feelings in the most serious way he knows: "If I get to heaven and you're not there / I'm gonna paint your name on the heavenly stair / If you aren't there on Judgment Day / Then I know, baby, you know the way." 

A couple bits of trivia:

- Bo's square guitar came about from his dancing on stage and landing, crotch-first, on his guitar.  He had someone shaves the sides off to make it smaller.

- Musicians on these songs include such classy performers as The Flamingos, The Moonglows, Little Walter, Otis Spann, and Lafayette Leake, all of whom could play as sweet and smooth as could be.  I suspect Bo Diddley was fun to collaborate with.

- "Diddy Wah Diddy" was covered by Captain Beefheart early in his career. Beefheart's band later included Ry Cooder, who covered the Blind Blake double-entendre rag "Diddie Wa Diddie" on Paradise and Lunch, where it was spelled like Bo's song and mistakenly credited to him. Blake didn't complain - he'd been dead 40 years by then.

I'm glad this album got voted in, hope a couple of you got something from my thoughts. Now I'll leave you with one of the strangest singles of its time, Bo's only Top 40 hit (!?!), peaking at number 20 in 1959, with Jerome Green, here they are doing the dozens on "Say Man".