The Man Who Brought The Groove
Jun. 7th, 2008 06:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
koganbotMark, 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, Bo was a pisser: funny, happy to take the music almost anywhere from flamenco to noise as long as the beat was moving. I think the YouTube clip is from Let The Good Times Roll, a film of an "oldies" concert in 1973. But it seems as much ahead of its time as from an earlier one, given the music that the Velvets and Stooges had also been doing and what a lot of the noise punk bands that formed after them only wished they could do.
And Bo was probably the first rock star to employ women guitarists, Lady Bo in 1958 followed by The Duchess in 1962. The Big TNT Show, 1966 [EDIT: OK, that link's dead, but this may be the clip I had anyway (which despite its caption, probably is from The Big TNT Show in 1966), Bo with The Duchess]:
On Ed Sullivan, 1955:
(According to Wikip, Sullivan thought Bo Diddley was going to perform Tennessee Ernie Ford's "16 Tons," but Bo crossed him up by playing "Bo Diddley.")
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, Bo was a pisser: funny, happy to take the music almost anywhere from flamenco to noise as long as the beat was moving. I think the YouTube clip is from Let The Good Times Roll, a film of an "oldies" concert in 1973. But it seems as much ahead of its time as from an earlier one, given the music that the Velvets and Stooges had also been doing and what a lot of the noise punk bands that formed after them only wished they could do.
And Bo was probably the first rock star to employ women guitarists, Lady Bo in 1958 followed by The Duchess in 1962. The Big TNT Show, 1966 [EDIT: OK, that link's dead, but this may be the clip I had anyway (which despite its caption, probably is from The Big TNT Show in 1966), Bo with The Duchess]:
On Ed Sullivan, 1955:
(According to Wikip, Sullivan thought Bo Diddley was going to perform Tennessee Ernie Ford's "16 Tons," but Bo crossed him up by playing "Bo Diddley.")
no subject
Date: 2008-06-09 09:21 am (UTC)