Thursday, September 16. 1999
The University Daily Kansan
Section B·Page 11
I
Entertainment
Despite cash blues, Bo Diddley still rockin' at 70
The Associated Press
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Bo Diddley's greatest claim to fame may not be his induction on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, nor his star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, nor his lifetime achievement award from the Grammys.
It was a Nike commercial.
Already a rock and blues icon, Diddley entered the American consciousness after a 1989 "Bo Knows" commercial for Nike. Commenting on football and baseball star Bo Jackson's guitar skills, Bo Diddley turned to the camera and said, "He don't know Diddley."
But this 70-year-old rocker, famous for his innovative use of rhythm, his square homemade guitar, dark glasses and black hat, has not reaped the financial rewards to go along with his music awards.
"I never could figure out what it had to do with shoes, but it worked," Diddley says. "I got into a lot of new front rooms on the tube. I thank Nike and Bo Jackson for doing it."
"It didn't put no figures in my checkbook," he said angrily, although he appreciated the honors.
The need for money and not just a love of music keeps him constantly on the road, playing county fairs, small casinos, private parties and music halls.
"If you ain't got no money, ain't nobody calls you穷oney," he said.
He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland in 1987, followed by the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1989, and received his lifetime achievement award from the Grammys in 1998.
"It just told people they thought enough of Bo Diddley for me to be honored by putting my name on something, which was really great. But it didn't put no bucks in my kitty." Diddley said.
Diddley said he only received a small portion of the money he should have made during his career. Like other artists of his generation, he was paid a flat fee for his recordings and received no royalty payments on record sales. He also said he was never paid for many of his performances.
"I am owed. I've never got paid." he said. "A dude with a pencil is worse than a cat with a machine gun."
In 1994, he claimed to be $300,000 in debt and was paying for a large home in
Hawthorne, about 20 miles outside Gainesville. He later divorced and moved to a secluded area outside Bronson, about 40 miles to the west. "My kids were deprived of going to college," he said. "The money I was making wasn't enough to send them somewhere."
Touring at his age doesn't trouble him.
"Seventy ain't nothing but a damn number," he said. "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 vet."
Born Ellas Bates on Dec. 30, 1928, in McComb, Miss., Diddley was later adopted by his mother's cousin and took on the name Ellas McDaniel, which his new wife, Sylvia, still calls him.
His family moved to Chicago when he was 5. He took violin lessons at the Ebenezer Baptist Church and learned guitar at age 10, when he began playing on street corners.
The name Bo Diddley came from other youngsters.
"I don't know where the kids got it, but the kids in grammar school gave me that name," he said. He liked it and made it
"Diddley — that word has been around for a long, long time. When I was a kid, my mother used to say, 'You don't know diddley squat,'"
his stage name.
Diddley was playing Chicago's Maxwell Street in his early teens.
He was signed to the Chess and Checkers record labels in 1955. His first single, "Bo Diddley," went to No.2 on the rhythm and blues charts.
"His Chess recordings stand among the best singular recordings of the 20th century," said Howard Kramer, assistant curator of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.
But many artists, including the Rolling Stones, the Who, Bruce Springsteen, Buddy Holly, George Michael and Elvis Costello copied Diddley's style.
Diddley said he had no musical influences growing up. "I don't like to copy anybody.Everybody tries to do what I do, update it.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.
Diddley was a pioneer of the electric guitar, adding reverb and tremolo.
"He treats it like it was a drum, very rhythmic," said E. Michael Harrington, music theory and composition professor at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn.
But despite his technique and talent, Diddley said disc jockeys in the early 1950s called his work jungle music. It wasn't until the pioneering disc jockey Alan Freed came up with the term "rock-and-roll" that Diddley's music found a home on mainstream radio.
Dudley said Freed was talking about him, recalling Freed's introduction before an Apollo Theater concert: "Here is a man with an original sound, who is going to rock and roll you right out of your seat."
Diddley's major hits included, "Say Man," "You Can't Judge a Book By Its Cover," "I'm A Man," "Shave and a Haircut," "Uncle John" and "The Mule."
"I came out of school and made something out of myself," he said. "I am known all over the globe, all over the world."
African-Americans recognized in book about composers
Legacy of contributions by artists remembered in new music dictionary
The Associated Press
CHICAGO — Music is about making beautiful sounds. For Sam Floyd, it also is about recognition — something he says many black composers have failed to receive.
As a remedy, Floyd has helped gather the legacy of five centuries of music composition into a two-volume, 1,273-page reference book called the International Dictionary of Black Composers.
"Many of these people, other than composers of classical music, have not been treated as composers," said Floyd, director of the Center for Black Music Research at Chicago's Columbia College. "They have been treated as musicians and performers. This shows there is another side to these people."
Profiled are long-ignored classical composers, creators of turn-of-the-century marches and ragtime music, mid-century jazz composers and writers of more recent popular music.
The dictionary, edited by Floyd, includes biographies and critical essays. It lists the works of composers such as pop icon Curtis Mayfield, best known for his 1965 hit "People Get Ready," and jazz greats Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington ("Mood Indigo," "Sophisticated Lady") and his cohort Billy Strayhorn ("Satin Doll," "Lush Life").
It does have some glaring omissions; the composers of many Motown hits of the 1960s and 1970s are not mentioned. Floyd said they will be added in later editions.
Classical music composers comprise the largest group of artists profiled, with 87 listings. Among them is Vicente Lusitano of Portugal — whose book of 23 motets, or sacred music, "Liber pimus epigramatum," in 1551 makes him the first black composer known to have his music published.
"They have been treated as musicians and performers. This shows there is another side to these people."
Sam Floyd
director of the Center for Black Music Research at
Chicago's Columbia College
Reference books profiling composers and musicians are used both by scholars and by music groups seeking material to perform, said Northwestern University professor M. William Karlins.
Floyd's dictionary may be part of a trend, he added.
"A lot of people who were neglected are now getting attention because white, European composers have gotten all the attention for the last several hundred years," Karlins said.
The dictionary was the idea of Chicago-
based Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers. Publisher George Walsh said the large number of reference works that focus on white composers motivated him to turn to Floyd to give the field some balance.
Floyd said the time and money needed to create such a dictionary — it took five years to produce — and a perceived lack of a market discouraged others from doing so.
"They saw a significant need for this," Floyd said of Fitzroy Dearborn. "I wanted to do it. But I wanted it to be different from other such works."
Floyd enlisted 108 music scholars to write essays about the dictionary's 185 composers.
Classical and jazz composers whose music was recorded or published were considered for inclusion. For blues, researchers also considered how the artists' style influenced others in the field. For instance, Blind Lemon Jefferson — a soft tawny blues singer-guitarist who froze
For instance, Blind Lemon Jefferson — a self-taught blues singer-guitarist who froze to death in a 1929 Chicago snowstorm at
age 36 — was a prolific recorder of music in the four years before his death. His complex and rapid guitar playing influenced later blues guitarists, according to David Evans, a University of Memphis music professor.
Howard University music professor James Weldon Norris said the dictionary is a necessity, particularly when it comes to classical music. A lack of knowledge about black composers means their music is seldom performed, he said.
"Not only are they not known in general, but black people don't know them because they are not being taught," said Norris, who as director of the Howard University Chorus includes a new or unknown work by a black composer in all of the choir's performances.
"So many are neglected," he said. "There is a long list of African-Spanish, African-Portuguese and African-Indian composers. They were the most famous and talented musicians of their time" in the 1600s.