There was a reason he was enlisted to write the liner notes for the Bo Chess Box. It’s by a considerable margin the best book I’ve ever read discussing what rock ‘n’ roll is and where it came from and I mention it here because his analysis of Bo Diddley is unparalleled.
This quote - as well as the other quotes attributed to Diddley - comes from Rock & Roll: An Unruly History, Palmer’s companion volume to the 1995 PBS television series. Robert Palmer (the writer, not the musician), Rock & Roll: An Unruly History, p. What does remain constant is the method of rhythmic layering.” Neither the exact rhythm patterns nor the way these patterns are parceled out among the various instruments remain constant from song to song. The traditional rhythms he picked up were merely raw materials. “The very concept of the ‘Bo Diddley beat’ is inadequate what Bo came up with was a comprehensive theory of rhythmic orchestration. Bo Diddley turned all of these rhythmic influences into one of the 20th century’s most profound musical legacies. The Bo Diddley sound wasn’t a beat, it was a philosophy of orchestrated rhythm whose lineage began with West African drums, came up through the Caribbean and American South via hand-clapping and foot-stamping in ring shouts and sanctified church services, migrated to American cities like Chicago and Detroit with the primal drone of the blues, and stood on the American street corner doing the dozens. His catalog is an encyclopedia of rhythmic jukes, jives, and divebombs that, unfortunately, has been reduced in the collective consciousness to the “Bo Diddley Beat.” It’s a difference as stark as, well, black and white, and no one in the postwar R&B era brought more ‘R’ to the table than Bo Diddley. It doesn’t simply explain his distinctive, percussive sound, it helps explain the critical difference between rhythm and blues and pop music as they each evolved through the 20th century.
Calloway the sound of one hand clapping full#
Therefore, to appreciate the profound impact of Bo Diddley, you have to digest the full implications of that quote. He coaxes multiple rhythms from that drum, in an effort to tell his story and to support others contributing to that story.
I play the guitar as if I was playing drums.”Ī musician doesn’t beat a drum, he plays a drum. “My music has a little bit of a spiritual taste, but it’s also primitive.
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