November 20, 1955: Bo Diddley appears on The Ed Sullivan Show for the 1st time. There would not be a 2nd.
He was born Ellas Otha Bates on December 30, 1928 in McComb, Mississippi. He was raised by a cousin, Gussie McDaniel, and he became Ellas McDaniel. She moved him to the South Side of Chicago in 1934. America's largest black neighborhood, it has more black people than Harlem or any other neighborhood in New York City.
And it became home to many blues legends, including Muddy Waters (real name McKinley Morganfield), Howlin' Wolf (Chester Burnett), Willie Dixon, John Lee Hooker and Koko Taylor. Taylor was from Memphis, Tennessee, on the State Line with Mississippi. The others were all from Mississippi, just like Ellas.
By the time he was 18, Ellas had learned to play the violin, and was invited to join a church orchestra. But he loved the guitar more, and for the rest of his life, he played guitars that he built himself. He formed a band with Jerome Green, who played maracas.
That was Ellas' idea: He wanted a percussion sound, but drums were too big and bulky to carry around. He said, "I taught Jerome how to play those maracas... They gave... the unique sound, that jungle-type rhythm feel." On what would become the classic Bo Diddley recordings, Bo and Jerome would often trade lyrics, and even good-natured insults.
There are several theories as to origin of the stage name "Bo Diddley," including potential sources that Bo probably couldn't have known about by 1955. There was a story by Zora Neale Hurston that wasn't published in her lifetime, about a "Beau Diddley" who gets brought down by vengeful magic. Bo probably would have liked that, had he known.
In 1951, he landed a regular spot at the 708 Club, on Chicago's South Side, with a repertoire influenced by Waters, Hooker, and R&B pioneer Louis Jordan. In late 1954, he signed with Chess Records. At their already-famous studio at 2120 South Michigan Avenue, Bo Diddley the man, and his band, recorded "Bo Diddley" the song on March 2, 1955.
Otis Spann, who had played piano on Waters' records, played on this one as well. Billy Boy Arnold played the harmonica. Jerome Green, of course, played the maracas. Now needing a drummer, company owner Leonard Chess -- one of several white Jewish men who aided in the rise of black pioneers of rock and roll -- assigned Frank Kirkland.
The song tells of Bo and his unnamed girlfriend, including the diamond ring he's bought her, a story resembling the lullaby "Hush, Little Baby." (Which would be converted into another R&B song, "Mockingbird," in 1963, by Inez & Charlie Foxx.) Its "dum-da-da-dum-dum, dum-dum" rhythm, similar to "Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits," was copied on countless records, and became known as "The Bo Diddley Beat."
Although it did not reach Billboard magazine's top 100 popular songs, it did hold the Number 1 spot on their R&B chart for 2 weeks, and was one of the Top 10 best-selling records of calendar year 1955.
This earned him a slot on The Ed Sullivan Show for the night of November 20, 1955. But somebody -- probably the show's very uptight producer, Bob Precht, who was also Ed's son-in-law -- thought "Bo Diddley" the song was too black for mainstream CBS audiences of the Ike Age.
So he told Bo to sing another big hit at the time, "Sixteen Tons." Bo said he didn't know that song. That was an obvious lie: Tennessee Ernie Ford's version was then the Number 1 song in the country, and everybody knew it. So it was written on cue cards.
Bo played his own song, anyway, claiming that's what he saw on the cards. He was banned from the show, and never appeared on it again. This was 12 years before Jim Morrison of The Doors defied Precht's order to not sing the line, "Girl, we couldn't get much higher." Bo's thought on that was not recorded.
Bo would have several more R&B hits, including "I'm a Man," famously covered by The Spencer Davis Group; and "Who Do You Love?" famously covered by Ronnie Hawkins, the singer who gave the band known as The Band their start.
He had one song that made Billboard's famous Top 40: "Say Man," which hit Number 20 in 1959. There's no singing on it: Basically, it's just the band jamming, while Bo and Jerome Green trade brags and insults, cut down to 3 minutes and 9 seconds for brevity, and, as Bo put it, "Of course, they cut out all the dirty parts." Some rock historians call it "the first rap record." It's closer to "The Dozens" than to a rap battle, since they make no attempt to make their zingers, both for themselves and against each other, rhyme.
In 1960, with Western movies and TV shows at their peak, he released an album titled Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger, which included his version of "Sixteen Tons." In 1962, going with the biggest dance craze of all time, the Twist, he released Bo Diddley's a Twister.
In 1963, with surf rock as the new big thing, he released Surfin' with Bo Diddley. Several songs had nautical themes, including his version of "Old Man River." He also covered the old dance tune "The Hucklebuck" and Ray Charles' "What'd I Say." But it didn't work, mainly because it didn't really sound like surf rock, and it was hard for white record-buyers to imagine a black man surfing. As rock historian Dave Marsh put it, "Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger made sense on the South Side of Chicago, but where was he going to surf? Lake Michigan?" (Well, the Great Lakes do have tides.)
Bo had 2 women in his band as rhythm guitarists. From 1957 to 1961, it was Peggy Jones, a.k.a. Peggy Malone, a.k.a. Lady Bo. In spite of that nickname, she was married not to Bo, but to Bo's bass player, Wally Malone. It was a mixed marriage: Peggy was black, and Wally was white. Peggy may have been the very first woman who ever played guitar in a prominent rock and roll band. (All-female bands were rare then, and none made it big until the 1970s.) She later played with James Brown and Sam & Dave.
When Peggy left, she recruited her own replacement, Norma-Jean Wofford, a.k.a. The Duchess. As with Peggy, it was initially presumed that she was Bo's girl, and he denied it by saying she was really his sister. He said, "Norma-Jean was my first sidekick... We did everything together. She was like family, which was why I told everyone she was my sister." The Duchess stayed with Bo's band until 1966.
Jerome Green had also played on some of Chuck Berry's hits, including his 1st, "Maybellene." He left Bo's band in 1964, to get married. After that, history loses track of him. Record-keeping being what it was in the black South in the 1930s, no one is quite sure when he was born, most likely 1934; and, as a tangential figure in rock and roll history, no one is quite sure when or how he died, although most sources say it was in New York in 1973, which would have made him only 38 years old. Frank Kirkland also died that year. Otis Spann was already dead, from liver cancer in 1970.
Among those bandmembers not yet mentioned: Norma-Jean Wofford died in 2005, Clifton James in 2006, Lester Davenport in 2009, and Peggy Jones in 2015. As of November 20, 2022, Billy Boy Arnold is the last surviving musician to have played on the original recording of "Bo Diddley." Wally Malone, who joined Bo after that, is also still alive.
Bo married and divorced 4 times. He had 4 daughters: Evelyn Kelly, Pamela Jacobs, Terri Lynn McDaniel-Hines and Tammi D. McDaniel; and 2 sons: Ellas A. McDaniel and Steven Jones. He lived to see 18 grandchildren, 15 great-great-grandchildren, and 3 great-great-grandchildren.
In 1971, Bo moved to Los Lunas, New Mexico, where he bought and donated 3 cars to the Valencia County Sheriff's Department, and was named an honorary Deputy Sheriff. For the rest of his life, he divided his time between Albuquerque, New Mexico and Archer, Florida, a farming community near Gainesville, in a custom-built log cabin that he and his friends built by hand.
In 1983, wearing the hat that, along with his self-made rectangular guitars, had become his trademark, he played a pawnbroker in the film Trading Places, telling Dan Aykroyd that, in Philadelphia, his fancy Swiss watch was worth fifty bucks. In 1987, he was elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
In 1989, Bo Diddley filmed a Nike commercial with baseball and football player Vincent "Bo" Jackson, showing that, while that younger Bo knows baseball, Bo knows football, and Bo seems to know every other sport, he was not a good guitarist, and Diddley told Jackson, "Bo, you don't know diddley!"
That commercial was made for baseball's All-Star Game. For Super Bowl XXIV, they filmed a sequel: Starting with the onscreen words, "Six months later... " Jackson had apparently learned from the master, who said, "Bo, I guess you do know Diddley!"
After years of living with diabetes, and suffering from the effects of strokes for about a year, Bo Diddley died on June 2, 2008, at the age of 79, at his home in Archer.
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November 20, 1955 was a Sunday. These NFL games were played:
* The New York Giants beat their arch-rivals, the Philadelphia Eagles, 31-7 at the Polo Grounds.
* The Los Angeles Rams and the Baltimore Colts played to a tie, 17-17 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore.
* The Cleveland Browns beat their arch-rivals, the Pittsburgh Steelers, 41-14 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium.
* The Chicago Bears beat the Detroit Lions, 24-14 at Briggs Stadium (later Tiger Stadium) in Detroit.
* The Washington Redskins beat the Chicago Cardinals, 31-0 at Comiskey Park in Chicago.
* And the Green Bay Packers beat the San Francisco 49ers, 27-21 at Milwaukee County Stadium.
Baseball was out of season. There were 3 games played in the NBA:
* The New York Knicks beat the Fort Wayne Pistons, 119-115 in overtime at the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
* The Syracuse Nationals beat the St. Louis Hawks, 84-80 at the Onondaga County War Memorial (now the Upstate Medical University Arena) in Syracuse, New York.
* And the Rochester Royals beat the Minneapolis Lakers, 104-96 at the Minneapolis Auditorium.
And the NHL's entire "Original Six" were in action. The New York Rangers hosted the Montreal Canadiens, 1-1 at the old Madison Square Garden. The Boston Bruins hosted the Toronto Maple Leafs at the Boston Garden. And the Chicago Black Hawks hosted the Detroit Red Wings at the Chicago Stadium. And the weird thing is, all 3 games ended in 1-1 ties.
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