Rock And Roll Giant To Get His Day

Ellas Otha Bates (78) aka Ellas O. B. McDaniel and better known in the music world as Bo Diddley will return to his hometown of McComb, Mississippi, on November 2-3 to be honored with a marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail.

The Dawgs have an open date that weekend, so there is no excuse for the likes of Travis Wolfe, who is prone to attend any music festival, not to attend the event. What could be more fun than a weekend in McComb? You could even have a bite to eat at the famed Dinner Bell Restaurant featuring a roundtable help yourself variety of country cooking favorites.

Back to Diddley -- he took the name from the "diddley bow", a one-stringed African instrument. In his performances he primarily used a rectangular-bodied Gretsch. Along with the Gretsch, nicknamed "The Twang Machine", Diddley used similar-shaped guitars made for him by other manufactures.

Bo Diddley played a rhumba-like beat which has been described as similar to the "hambone." For those of you who have never seen one do the hambone, you have missed out on a real treat. It brings back memories of my younger years.

"I've Got Spurs That Jingle, Jangle, Jingle", a song by Gene Autry, was the source of what is known as the "Bo Diddley beat." Diddley developed the beat while trying to play the Autry hit.

For you music buffs, the Bo Diddley beat can be counted out as a two-bar phrase:

One and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and -- the bolded counts are the clave rhythm. His sound cannot be properly created without tuning the guitar: 1st string E 329.6; 2nd string B 246.9; 3rd string G sharp 207.6; 4th string E 164.8; 5th string A 110.0; and 6th string E 82.4. Wow!

Those of you who might think that I understand what I have written in the above paragraph are utterly and completely wrong -- I do not have the foggiest idea what all of that means. It is all courtesy of Wikipedia, and if you need more information, you can read the 8 pages for yourself.

Like his music or not, his beat shows up in the songs of Elvis Presley, U2, The Smiths, Johnnie Otis, George Michael, The Strangeloves and BowWowWow, Guns N' Roses, David Bowie and the Stooges to name a few (courtesy of Wikipedia). Don't ask me who all of these people are -- I have heard some of the music by these artists, and I do vaguely remember the likes of "Willie and the Hand Jive" (Otis), "His Latest Flame" (Presley), "How Soon Is Now" (The Smiths) and "Faith" (George Michael), but probably Elvis is the only one I could pick out of a crowd.

So let's all meet in McComb and tailgate to the music of Bo Diddley.

As an aside -- a young man from Meridian, Mississippi, attended, along with his father, a Bo Diddley concert and later begged his dad to help him build a two-sided amp just like the one he had seen that Diddley built for himself. And as they say, the rest is history and Peavey Electronics was born. Hartley Peavey, a 1965 graduate of Mississippi State University, is known in the music business as a real genius and a man ahead of his time in developing and producing musical instruments. Go State! We Dawg folks even honored him in 2004 by granting him an honorary doctorate in creating and performing arts. Go Dawgs!