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The Man Who Brought The Groove
Mark, you need to listen to this! (Lex too.)
Don't know if there'd been a lot of tracks that were primarily groove - i.e., that didn't feature a melody that developed over one or more chord changes - that hit on the r&b charts before "Bo Diddley" did in 1955. In any event, Bo's grooves reached beyond to a broader, whiter audience, were seized on by Buddy Holly and the Rolling Stones, for instance. So what's taken for granted as an option in popular music now - that a groove can be a container for a whole bunch of stuff, that a track doesn't have to build itself around an individual song, doesn't have to follow the demands of the melody or the harmony - had this guy as its main exponent until James Brown went funk in the mid '60s. ( Also, he was a pisser )
( Was probably the first rock star to employ women guitarists )
( 1955 )
Don't know if there'd been a lot of tracks that were primarily groove - i.e., that didn't feature a melody that developed over one or more chord changes - that hit on the r&b charts before "Bo Diddley" did in 1955. In any event, Bo's grooves reached beyond to a broader, whiter audience, were seized on by Buddy Holly and the Rolling Stones, for instance. So what's taken for granted as an option in popular music now - that a groove can be a container for a whole bunch of stuff, that a track doesn't have to build itself around an individual song, doesn't have to follow the demands of the melody or the harmony - had this guy as its main exponent until James Brown went funk in the mid '60s. ( Also, he was a pisser )
( Was probably the first rock star to employ women guitarists )
( 1955 )