Bo Diddley

Bo Diddley, born Ellas Bates McDaniel near Magnolia south of McComb on December 30, 1928, spent his early years in Pike and Amite counties and became one of the most unconventional yet influential figures in American popular music. Acclaimed as the father of rock and roll, he wrote and recorded hits including "I'm A Man," "Bo Diddley," "Say Man," and "I'm a Roadrunner," and his distinctive beat and pioneering use of electronic distortion were widely influential. According to the 1930 census, his name as a two-year-old was Ellis [sic] Landry; his mother, Ethel Wilson, was then living with her cousin Eugene Bates, the man Diddley believed to be his father. He used the surname Bates until his mother's cousin Gussie McDaniel began raising him, and the McDaniel family lived on Carver Street in McComb near Highway 51 before moving to Chicago in the mid-1930s. There he took up the violin, received his first guitar at age twelve, and later said his unique guitar style grew largely from trying to imitate the sound of a violin bow. As a teenager he played for tips on the streets and later in clubs with groups that included Jody Williams and Billy Boy Arnold. To create his own sound, he rebuilt guitar amplifiers, made a tremolo unit from a clock spring and automobile parts, and strengthened the group's rhythm with maracas and drums. In 1955 he made his first single for Chicago's Checker Records, and both sides became hits: "I'm A Man" asserted pride at a time when many whites referred to an African American man derogatorily as "boy," while "Bo Diddley" featured his trademark beat, similar to a traditional African American slapping rhythm known as hambone. He said he traced his variation of that rhythm to Pentecostal church services, and his younger brother, the Reverend Kenneth Haynes, recalled him singing it as a child. The stage name Bo Diddley had been used by various black vaudeville performers before his birth and was suggested as a more colorful recording name than Ellas McDaniel. Along with Fats Domino, Little Richard, and Chuck Berry, he was among the few African American artists to achieve crossover stardom in the 1950s rock 'n' roll market, and many bands adopted his songs and beat. His music was covered by Buddy Holly, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Eric Clapton, and many others, his guitar sound influenced musicians including Link Wray, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, and Pete Townsend, and his later funk recordings were sampled by hip hop artists such as De la Soul and Method Man. A member of both the Blues and Rock and Roll Halls of Fame, he received Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation and the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, as well as a Mississippi Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts, before dying at his home in Archer, Florida, on June 2, 2008.

McComb, Mississippi · United States