Do you consider Bo Diddley 'blues'?!
Question: Why or why not?
Answers: Why or why not?
Blues AND rock and roll. So much more to Bo's influence than people imagine. "Who Do You Love" could have been a rap song with its swagger and I wonder if it caused Willie Dixon to write "I'm Ready" for Muddy Waters.
Bo rocks and plays blues. He's one of the legends who disobeyed white tv producers during the 1950s on live television and sang his own songs instead of the tame ones they'd picked and he'd rehearsed. He lied to them, claiming it was his glasses! Hah!
Go, Bo Diddley! Pride of McComb, Mississippi, Pike County, also the home of George "Harmonica" Smith.
Mark, I live in Jackson and the King Edward is still standing, barely. Renovation underway after years of infighting.
I always considered Bo Diddley to be Blues... one of the originals.
He has that gritty old-school blues style.
Wikepedia says that he was integral to the transition of Rock and Roll to blues.
Yes! It is evident on how his guitar licks! He is using the BLUES scale! Hehehe!
yes i do!!! why i used to live @ the world famous "KING EDWARD HOTEL" i'm not a blues fan and it wasn't a nice place but all the big namesplayed there and not one of them would say bo diddley ain't blues. peace
Most definitely blues.
His driving rhythms, the call and response, the rhyme schemes and inuendo is all blues. Bo just turned up the juice. I consider him blues. But also feel that, when it comes to Rock & Roll if he's NOT one of it's Fathers, he was damn sure there to help with the delivery.
Yes.
There is little to no different between rock or the mid-fifties and the blues of the early fifties.
They asked B.B. King once what he thought of rock and he said words to the effect of: I thought it was what we were doing, but for white kids, rock just sounded like the kind of blues we were doing at that time.
Bo Diddley was a blues artist for Chess Records.His song "I'm A Man" was copied by Muddy Waters,who renamed it "Mannish Boy".Eric Clapton covered Bo's "Before You Accuse Me".He also did an album with Muddy and Howlin'Wolf called Super,Super Blues Band and even though he mainly deferred to the two greats;Bo was an integral part of the recordings.
Make no mistake,though,Bo Diddley also was a rocker."Who Do You Love" was (and still is)a rocker;whether you hear Bo's original or George Thorogood's cover version.
Regardless of whether you think Bo is a blues artists or a rocker;there can be no denying his influence on music.Everyone knows what the"Bo Diddley" beat is.
Interesting question and responses as diverse as Bo Diddley. I think Bo is in a category unto himself. His style shares the same traditions that other blues musicians use, like call and response, but he expresses it differently. You can say that I'm A Man is blues, but like Say Man, he's also using other African music traditions: the storyteller. Also, Jerome's intrinsic maracas playing, unique drum beat, guitar rhythms and vocal style all set his music apart.
Bo is whatever Bo wants to be. I once played drums for Bo Diddley. It was a one night only show and it was the biggest thrill of my life, as far as being 'star-struck.'
Back to your question, it reminds me of one of the early(black) blues pioneers asking a magazine interviewer, "How come when I play That's alright Mama, it's blues, and when Elvis plays it, it's rock and roll?"
Something to think about.
Yes - you need no further explanation. Someone else decided to call his songs Rock and Roll when performed by white folks. Mr McDaniel never intended it that way.