Bo Diddley Dies at 79

Who, or what, is Bo Diddley? He was black, he came from Mississippi, he married a 15 year old white woman as his third wife. He was banned from the Ed Sullivan show cause he played his song and not the one Ed told him to. (Maybe Elvis Costello was thinking about this when he played ‘Radio’ on SNL) His pompadour could take Little Richard’s in an alley fight. He took blues and noise and church and bad dreams and mutated it into rock and roll before anyone knew what to call it. He made guitar pedals out of car parts, he made a guitars out of a box of wood and invented sounds that had never existed before. His rock and roll sounds more like rock and roll than Elvis and came two tears earlier. He was a natural man, a strange man and a strange and natural genius of music.

Bo Diddley was the first Black musician on the Ed Sullivan Show

listen to the nonsense vaguely racist introduction from Mr. Fathead... Dr. Jive carries himself with infinitely more dignity.