Hey Bo Diddley

If you saw the new movie "Cadillac Records" this month you saw the highly fictionalized story of groundbreaking Chicago blues label Chess Records. While the film was kind to the enduring legacies of Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Howlin' Wolf, Etta James and to some extent, Willie Dixon, what you didn't see or hear was anything about Ellas Otha Bates, aka Ellas McDaniel better known to the world as Bo Diddley.

And his manager Margo Lewis, told the New York Post (read full article here) there's a reason for the glaring omission:

"It's no secret that Bo had real issues with the Chess brothers and their 'creative accounting practices.' It was Bo's recollection that every time he or another performer would go into the Chess offices to ask for their royalties, they were given the keys to a new Cadillac instead. So, in that regard, at least they got the title of the movie right. Regardless, we are completely shocked that the producers would omit such a seminal figure as Bo."

Of course Bo wasn't the only Chess artist left out of Cadillac Records, fans of The Moonglows have a beef too. But even Leonard Chess' brother Phil is written out of the Chess records story.

Lewis says a documentary on the life and music of Bo Diddley is in the works with comedian Dennis Leary's Apostle Pictures.

Another movie about Chess Records should include Bo Diddley quite prominently, since it takes the movie title from one of Diddley's hit songs "Who Do You Love". This independent film about Chess Records was well received at the Toronto Film Festival.

If there were any single day of the year not to overlook Bo Diddley, that would be today. It was on this day back in 1928 that Bo Diddley was born in McComb, Mississippi.

Ned Sublette, the arts and culture writer for Smithsonian Magazine (read the full article here) writes about Bo's inauspicious beginning:

"His teenage mother was unable to care for him, and he never knew his father, so the future Bo Diddley was adopted by his mother's cousin Gussie McDaniel, who gave him her last name and moved him to Chicago when he was about 7. There he was present at the creation of one of the great American musics: the electric Chicago blues."

And then Sublette includes this anecdote about Bo and the early formation of rock and roll:

"He appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show" on November 20, 1955—almost a year before Elvis Presley did. But Sullivan got mad at him for playing "Bo Diddley" instead of his one-chord cover version of "Sixteen Tons" (then the top recording in the nation, but by Tennessee Ernie Ford) and never had him back."

Then Sublette tells the story of how Bo Diddley got the name he would make world famous:

"Bo Diddley had been the name of an old vaudeville comedian who was still kicking around on the chitlin circuit when Ellas McDaniel recorded "Bo Diddley." The song's lyrics originally referred to an "Uncle John." Bandmate Billy Boy Arnold claimed to have been the one who suggested replacing those words with the comedian's name. It was an on-the-spot decision, he said, and it was the producer and label owner Leonard Chess who put out the record "Bo Diddley" using Bo Diddley as the artist's name."

When Bo died last June at his Florida home, he left a legacy to be admired and treasured, and never to be forgotten.

(Click here to hear NPR story on Cadillac Records and Who Do You Love)

(Click to hear Bo Diddley)

(Click to hear I'm A Man)