Bo Diddley - Ride On: The Chess Masters, 1960-1961 (2 CD, 2009/FLAC)

 

One of the great things about Bo Diddley, something that often goes unmentioned, is that he was a home-recording pioneer, building his own studio years before any other rocker. The full fruits of this labor can be heard on Ride On: The Chess Masters, Vol. 3 -- 1960-1961, Hip-O Select's third installment in their complete Bo Chess/Checker masters and easily the weirdest set yet. 

All 54 songs here were recorded over the course of 13 months: a whopping 17 them have never been released (an additional seven have never seen release in the U.S.), every one of them was cut in his home studio in Washington DC, and not a one reached the charts. That lack of commercial success should in no way be seen as an indication that the music on Ride On is subpar -- odd and messy, yes, but the music here is fueled by a mad genius that could only have flourished in a hothouse setting like a personal home studio. Bo wound up succumbing to every studio habit that would eventually become cliché: he messed around with tempos, tinkered around endlessly with the same theme, left instrumental backing tracks without vocals, sped up his own voice to create an alter ego (Frankie Jive, who jousted with Bo on the "Say Man" rewrites "Funny Talk" and "Bring Them Back Alive"), kept sloppy notation so records by other musicians were called his (Peggy Jones claims to have recorded everything on the instrumental "Aztec"). On top of this, Diddley wrote a clutch of cheap, infectious dance-rock cash-ins, appropriated old folk tunes as his own, wrote plenty of self-mythologizing tunes ("[Bo Diddley's A] Gunslinger," "Bo Diddley Is an Outlaw," "Bo Diddley Is a Lover," "Bo's Vacation"), and tossed off some killer-diller jokes and a few classic rockers like "Ride on Josephine," which gives this collection its name. Much of this music was heard on the classic LPs Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger and Bo Diddley Is a Lover, but in many ways the way to hear it is on this wild, woolly complete compilation, where all the flights of fancy sit next to the big, booming rockers, where the variety proves Bo to be the visionary he is. 

 

Bo Diddley - Road Runner: The Chess Masters, 1959-1960 (2 CD, 2008/FLAC)

 

Road Runner, the second volume of Hip-O Select's ongoing chronicle of Bo Diddley's complete Chess/Checker master recordings, covers roughly one calendar year whereas its predecessor, I'm a Man, spanned four -- a good indication that 1959 was an eventful year for Bo. During this one year, he had his biggest pop hit in the jive-talking "Say Man" and had another sizable R&B hit with "Crackin' Up," but both these sides were cut in 1958 and released as a single in 1959. As they climbed the charts, Diddley was frenetically recording, spinning off his "Bo Diddley" into "Nursery Rhyme aka Puttentang" while mythologizing himself yet again in "The Story of Bo Diddley," attempting to steal back his signature beat from Johnny Otis' "Willie & the Hand Jive" with "Willie Fell in Love," slamming out a sequel to "Say Man," trying to catch the Caribbean winds that were blowing in, hauling out his violin, pushing his amp on instrumentals -- basically doing anything that popped into his head. So many ideas were spilling out of his head that perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise that by the time 1959 was coming to a close, Bo set up his own studio in his house, then delivered finished tapes to Chess -- a practice completely unheard of that year!

 

 

Bo Diddley - The Chess Years 1955-1973 [12 CD, 1993]

 

An influential singer & guitarist who recorded his best known material for the Checker and Chess labels. In 1955, Bo Diddley scored his first hit with the double sided single "Bo Diddley"/"I'm A Man" and a string of R&B hits followed through the 50's & early 60's, most notably "Diddley Daddy", "Say Man", "Roadrunner" and "Mona".

His trademark rhythm, the "Bo Diddley Beat" (shave-and-a-haircut, two bits), was an acknowledged influence on Buddy Holly, The Rolling Stones, Jim Morrison, The Yardbirds and George Thorogood, among others.