Legacy MattersI bet there's not a person over 30 who doesn't know Bo Diddley, doesn't like Bo Diddley, and isn't sad that he's gone.
Bo Diddley, a singer and guitarist who invented his own name, his own guitars, his own beat and, with a handful of other musical pioneers, rock ’n’ roll itself, died Monday at his home in Archer, Fla. He was 79.
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In the 1950s, as a founder of rock ’n’ roll, Mr. Diddley — along with Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and a few others — helped to reshape the sound of popular music worldwide, building on the templates of blues, Southern gospel, R&B and postwar black American vernacular culture.
His original style of rhythm and blues influenced generations of musicians. And his Bo Diddley syncopated beat — three strokes/rest/two strokes — became a stock rhythm of rock ’n’ roll.
Telegraph obituary
Had Diddley been able to copyright the hypnotic and highly distinctive rhumba-like beat that was his musical trademark he might have been able to retire many years ago as a very wealthy man, rather than having to eke out a living in his old age, playing night-clubs, as his health deteriorated.
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It was a mark of his standing as one of the founding fathers of pop music that he would become one of the first performers to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in 1987.
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For all his success, Diddley always maintained that like so many artists of his generation he had never received his just desserts, receiving only a flat fee for his early recordings and no royalty payments on sales. "I am owed. I've never got paid," he said. "A dude with a pencil is worse than a cat with a machine gun."
"Bo Diddley is one of the seminal American guitarists and an architect of the rock 'n' roll sound," said Terry Stewart, president and chief executive of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland. "His unique guitar work, indelible rhythms, inventive songwriting, and larger-than-life personality make him an immortal author of the American songbook."
Singer Mick Jagger has paid tribute to singer-guitarist Bo Diddley as an "enormous force in music" and "a big influence on the Rolling Stones".
Jagger said the US rock 'n' roll pioneer, who has died at the age of 79, was "a wonderful, original musician".
Jagger, whose band recorded cover versions of Mona and Crackin' Up, said: "He was very generous to us in our early years and we learned a lot from him.
"We will never see his like again."