Published: June 03, 2008 09:46 am         

MUSIC: Rock legend Bo Diddley dies

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — Bo Diddley’s revolutionary approach to the guitar won him plenty of honors, reverent admirers and legions of fans: He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame while superstar acts like Bruce Springsteen and the Rolling Stones paid him homage.

But while Diddley was rich with accolades, the entertainer always lamented that he never earned true riches in music, even though his “shave and a haircut, two bits” rhythm and groundbreaking guitar effects changed the course of rock history.

“I am owed. I’ve never got paid,” he said. “A dude with a pencil is worse than a cat with a machine gun.”

Diddley, one of the founding fathers of rock ’n’ roll, died Monday at 79 of heart failure at his home in Archer, Fla., spokeswoman Susan Clary said. He had a heart attack in August, three months after suffering a stroke while touring in Iowa. Doctors said the stroke affected his ability to speak, and he returned to Florida to continue rehabilitation.

“Bo Diddley was a music pioneer and legend with a unique style,” legendary blues entertainer B.B. King said in a statement. “He will truly be missed, but his legacy will live on forever.”

The legendary singer and performer was an inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, had a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, and received a lifetime achievement award in 1999 at the Grammy Awards. In recent years he also played for the elder President Bush and President Clinton.

Diddley appreciated the honors he received, “but it didn’t put no figures in my checkbook.”

“If you ain’t got no money, ain’t nobody calls you honey,” he quipped.

Diddley, like other artists of his generations, was paid a flat fee for his recordings and said he received no royalty payments on record sales. He also said he was never paid for many of his performances. Despite his success, Diddley claimed he only received a small portion of the money he made during his career. Partly as a result, he continued to tour and record music until his stroke. Between tours, he made his home near Gainesville in north Florida.

“Seventy ain’t nothing but a damn number,” he told The Associated Press in 1999. “I’m writing and creating new stuff and putting together new different things. Trying to stay out there and roll with the punches. I ain’t quit yet.”

The name Bo Diddley came from other youngsters when he was growing up in Chicago, he said in a 1999 interview.

“I don’t know where the kids got it, but the kids in grammar school gave me that name,” said Diddley, who was born as Ellas Bates. Diddley said he liked it so it became his stage name. Other times, he gave somewhat differing stories on where he got the name. Some says it’s after a one-string instrument used in traditional blues music called a diddley bow.

His first single, “Bo Diddley,” introduced record buyers in 1955 to his signature rhythm: bomp ba-bomp bomp, bomp bomp, often summarized as “shave and a haircut, two bits.” The B-side, “I’m a Man,” with its slightly humorous take on macho pride, also became a rock standard.

The company that issued his early songs was Chess-Checkers records, the storied Chicago-based labels that also recorded Chuck Berry and other stars.

Howard Kramer, assistant curator of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, said in 2006 that Diddley’s Chess recordings “stand among the best singular recordings of the 20th Century.”

Diddley’s other major songs included, “Say Man,” “You Can’t Judge a Book by Its Cover,” “Shave and a Haircut,” “Uncle John,” “Who Do You Love?” and “The Mule.”

Diddley’s influence was felt on both sides of the Atlantic. Buddy Holly borrowed the bomp ba-bomp bomp, bomp bomp rhythm for his song “Not Fade Away.”

The Rolling Stones’ bluesy remake of that Holly song gave them their first chart single in the United States, in 1964. The following year, another British band, the Yardbirds, had a Top 20 hit in the United States with their version of “I’m a Man.”

“He was a wonderful, original musician who was an enormous force in music and was a big influence on The Rolling Stones,” Mick Jagger said in a statement. “He was very generous to us in our early years and we learned a lot from him. We will never see his like again.”

Growing up, Diddley said he had no musical idols, and he wasn’t entirely pleased that others drew on his innovations.

“I don’t like to copy anybody. Everybody tries to do what I do, update it,” he said. “I don’t have any idols I copied after.”

“They copied everything I did, upgraded it, messed it up. It seems to me that nobody can come up with their own thing, they have to put a little bit of Bo Diddley there,” he said.

In the early 1950s, Diddley said, disc jockeys called his type of music “jungle music.” It was Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed who is credited with inventing the term “rock ’n’ roll.”

Diddley said Freed was talking about him, when he introduced him, saying, “Here is a man with an original sound, who is going to rock and roll you right out of your seat.”

Diddley won attention from a new generation in 1989 when he took part in the “Bo Knows” ad campaign for Nike, built around football and baseball star Bo Jackson. Commenting on Jackson’s guitar skills, Diddley says to him, “Bo, you don’t know diddly.”

“I never could figure out what it had to do with shoes, but it worked,” Diddley said. “I got into a lot of new front rooms on the tube.”

Diddley was born on Dec. 30, 1928, in McComb, Miss. and later adopted by his mother’s cousin where he took on the name Ellas McDaniel, which his wife always called him.

When he was 5, his family moved to Chicago, where he learned the violin at the Ebenezer Baptist Church. He learned guitar at age 10 and entertained passers-by on street corners.

By his early teens, Diddley was playing Chicago’s Maxwell Street.

“I came out of school and made something out of myself. I am known all over the globe, all over the world. There are guys who have done a lot of things that don’t have the same impact that I had,” he said.