All you rappers in the top 10, as Humpty-Hump once said, please allow me to bump thee. Because you ain’t got nothin’ over the original boastful rapper, Bo Diddley, who passed away Monday at 79.

His name was Ellas (Bates) McDaniel, taking on the name of his adoptive parents. “Bo Diddley” came about, as his harmonica player Billy Boy Arnold says in this priceless Richie Unterberger interview, because the record “Bo Diddley” came out with Bo Diddley as the artist, too. It meant nothing–as a put down, like “you ain’t Bo Diddley”–or it was just a funny-sounding name of some local hack playing in Chicago at the time, depending on whose account you believe.

I stand before you today not to bury Bo Diddley, but to appreciate him. Here’s where the rappers can just take a seat and shut their pieholes: Bo Diddley didn’t just rap and boast and insult his way into the hearts of rock fans, he did it with a guitar he built himself. Now I like Snoop Dogg and all, but I bet he couldn’t build a vocoder. In fact, most of us just weren’t born with that manufacturing gene.

Oh, but the catcalls of “Les Paul built his guitars, right?” shall rain down. But Paul didn’t invent a fistful of standards and whole new rhythms that drove the kids wild. Bo Diddley did. He invented the Bo Diddley Beat, which also can be referred to as “shave, haircut, two bits” or as Arnold refers to it, “the hambone beat.” Diddley, however played shiny-high chords over it, tremolo cranked over the top. Sounded a little like this:

Did we mention he could dance better than Usher? While playing that guitar, no less. Holy smokes. (more…)