[JPL] "Bo Diddley" beat is just clave

[Tom Reney]

Arturo,

As very ably and accurately stated by Ben Ratliff in yesterday's New York 
Times Page One obituary.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/arts/music/03diddley.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries&oref=slogin#

here's an excerpt:

Mr. Diddley said he had first heard the "Bo Diddley beat" - 
three-stroke/rest/two-stroke, or bomp-ba-domp-ba-domp, ba-domp-domp - in a 
church in Chicago. But variations of it were in the air. The children's game 
hambone used a similar rhythm, and so did the ditty that goes "shave and a 
haircut, two bits."

The beat is also related to the Afro-Cuban clave, which had been popularized 
at the time by the New Orleans mambo carnival song "Jock-A-Mo," recorded by 
Sugar Boy Crawford in 1953.

Whatever the source, Mr. Diddley felt the beat's power. In early songs like 
"Bo Diddley" and "Pretty Thing," he arranged the rhythm for tom-toms, 
guitar, maracas and voice, with no cymbals and no bass. (Also arranged in 
his signature rhythm was the eerie "Mona," a song of praise he wrote for a 
45-year-old exotic dancer who worked at the Flame Show Bar in Detroit; this 
song became the template for Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away.")

Tom Reney

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Arturo" <arturo893 at qwest.net>
To: "jazzproglist at jazzweek. com" <jazzproglist at jazzweek.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2008 11:45 AM
Subject: [JPL] "Bo Diddley" beat is just clave


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>
> I was amused about most mainstream media referring to Bo Diddley's "beat" 
> as
> if it never existed before him. The beat he used is nothing but the old
> "shave and a haircut-2 bits" pattern which is clave, the heartbeat of
> Afro-Cuban music, 3-2. That's why Bo also used maracas, a Caribbean
> creation. Bo was playing Latin Rock a decade before Santana.
>
> Arturo
>
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