Bo Diddley, Bo Diddley, where have you been

I'll leave it to others to write the official obituary for one of the true pioneering giants of rock 'n' roll but I had to love this lead from the New York Times' story:

"Bo Diddley, a singer and guitarist who invented his own name, his own guitars, his own beat and, with a handful of other musical pioneers, rock ’n’ roll itself, died Monday at his home in Archer, Fla. He was 79. "

I am a product of rock 'n' roll. I was a teenager when Elvis Presley recorded "Heartbreak Hotel" and when Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and Bo Diddley defined my life and reshaped my future.

Bo Diddley's influence might be more identifiable to many today than Bo Diddley's music. Listen to Bruce Springsteen's great "She's the One" from his "Born to Run" album. What you're really listening to is Bo Diddley, just like you're hearing Bo Diddley when you play The Who's "Magic Bus" or any version of Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away."

But when I heard this morning that Bo Diddley had died, my mind raced back to my teenage years, to a song that he recorded called "Say Man," a call-and-response ditty where two men are trying to put down the girlfriend of the other. That song contains one of my favorite lines, not only from a Bo Diddley song, but from the entire rock catalog. You won't get the real impact of the line by reading it, you really need to seek out the song and here it for yourself. The line is: "Your girl's so ugly, she looks like she's been whupped with an ugly stick." (Part of the impact comes from the way Bo drawled that second "ugly.")

That line made me laugh out loud then and it still brought a smile to my face this morning, even though I knew it was the death of a legend that forced me to recall it.