In the summers of 19, he played at the Maxwell Street market in a band with Earl Hooker. Green became a near-constant member of McDaniel's backing band, the two often trading joking insults with each other during live shows. Inspired by a John Lee Hooker performance, Diddley supplemented his income as a carpenter and mechanic by playing on street corners with friends, including Jerome Green, in the Hipsters band, later renamed the Langley Avenue Jive Cats. Diddley said he thought that the trance-like rhythm he used in his rhythm and blues music came from the Sanctified churches he had attended as a youth in his Chicago neighborhood. However, he was more interested in the joyful, rhythmic music he heard at a local Pentecostal Church and took up the guitar his first recordings were based on that frenetic church music. He was an active member of Chicago's Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church, where he studied the trombone and the violin, becoming so proficient on the violin that the musical director invited him to join the orchestra, in which he played until he was 18. Diddley denied ever having the name "Otha" in a 2001 interview, saying "I don't know where they got that 'Otha' from", but his web site, maintained by his estate, confirms it as his middle name.Īfter his adoptive father Robert died in 1934, when Diddley was five years old, Gussie McDaniel moved with him and her three children to the South Side of Chicago he later dropped Otha from his name and became Ellas McDaniel. McDaniel eventually adopted him, and he assumed her surname. Wilson was only sixteen, and being unable to support a family, she gave her cousin, Gussie McDaniel, permission to raise her son. He was the only child of Ethel Wilson, a sharecropper's teenaged daughter, and Eugene Bates, whom he never knew. Early life īo Diddley was born in McComb, Mississippi, as Ellas Otha Bates (also stated as Otha Ellas Bates or Elias Otha Bates). Diddley is also recognized for his technical innovations, including his use of tremolo and reverb effects to enhance the sound of his distinctive rectangular-shaped guitars. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In recognition of his achievements, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, the Blues Hall of Fame in 2003, and the Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame in 2017. His use of African rhythms and a signature beat, a simple five- accent hambone rhythm, is a cornerstone of hip hop, rock, and pop music. He influenced many artists, including Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Animals, George Thorogood, Syd Barrett, and The Clash. Įllas Otha Bates McDaniel (Decem– June 2, 2008), known professionally as Bo Diddley, was an American guitarist and singer who played a key role in the transition from the blues to rock and roll. National Association of Music Merchants Oral History Library. "Bo Diddley Talks About His Early Days, Including His Twelve Years of Classical Music Training".
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