Bo Diddley

Influential singer and guitarist Bo Diddley was born Ellas Bates in 1928 in McComb, Mississippi. At age five he was adopted by his mother’s cousin and took her surname of McDaniel, relocating to Chicago. He played several instruments in church and eventually embraced the guitar, bringing some of the trance-inducing qualities of religious services to his own music in the early 1950s. His first single for Chess Records in 1955, “Bo Diddley”, named for his alter ego, was a maracas-driven track that introduced his singular take on the Cuban clave rhythm and reached No. 1 on the R&B chart. Diddley’s raw attack, rectangular guitar, nonchalant peculiarity and natural charisma allowed him to straddle the line between burgeoning rock ’n’ roll and the blues. He maintained that duality for decades, touring on the blues circuit while opening for rock bands as varied as the Grateful Dead and The Clash. By the 1970s Diddley’s recording career was definitively eclipsed by his steady touring, which he continued until 2007, a year before his death from chronic heart problems.