Goodbye, Bo Diddley

credit: Photographs by F. Scott Schafer/Corbis Outline

Bo Diddley passed away from heart failure on June 2 at age seventy-nine, and it’s easy—in the afterglow of his death—to bestow lofty titles on him. But the reality is that Diddley was the originator of rock and roll, the most influential figure in the history of popular music. Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry came from straight-up blues, but Diddley was different: something more primal, evil, and dangerous. The Bo Diddley beat—bonk, ba donk, donk, donk donk—is the most plagiarized riff of all time, showing up in songs such as Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away” and U2’s “Desire.” Elvis Presley, it has long been supposed, copped his stage moves from Diddley. Sure, Berry was a monumental figure in rock and roll, but his keyboardist Johnnie Johnson co-wrote many of his hits. The Stones wouldn’t exist without Bo Diddley, and even John Lennon, when asked what he wanted to do when he arrived in America for the first time, said: “I want to meet Bo Diddley.” The Clash asked him to tour with them. U2 adored him. Only Little Richard comes close to Diddley’s significance, and until the good reverend passes on, let’s just anoint Bo as the king.

But Diddley never reaped the full benefits of his influence. He signed away the publishing rights to his music for a $10,000 down payment on his first house, a bitter pill that he swallowed to his death. He once famously said: “Don’t trust nobody but your mama, and even then, look at her real good.” Until his stroke in May 2007 after a show in Council Bluffs, Iowa, Diddley played about a hundred dates a year, each a lesson in the theatrics of rock and roll with its ruckus of high kicks and searing work on his custom-made cigar-box-shaped guitar.

By all accounts, Diddley loved being just an average Joe to the residents of Archer, Florida, where he lived on a seventy-six-acre farm. “He always loved doing regular guy stuff,” says his band member Frank Daley. “We were in Santa Barbara and he called me and said, ‘Let’s go to the hardware store.’ He was looking for a big tarp to cover God-knows-what at his farm. He found this big blue thing, rolled it up and put it in his suitcase.” Diddley loved to cook chickens and turkeys in a smoking pit on his property, and drive around in his tractor moving earth around.

“I’d do his taxes and every year there was an expenditure for sand,” says Diddley’s co-manager Faith Fusillo. “He would get piles of sand and just move them from spot to spot. I was like, ‘How am I going to write this off?’”

Through his music, Diddley did move heaven and earth, and though his influence as Bo Diddley was never far from the minds of the people attending his June 7 funeral, it was the life of Ellas McDaniel—father, grandfather, and great-grandfather—that was celebrated during a four-hour “homegoing ceremony” at the Showers of Blessings Harvest Center in Gainesville. As the choir and band cooked up a chills-inducing spiritual, Diddley’s casket was wheeled in, followed by more than forty family members chanting “Hey, Bo Diddley” and led by his oldest daughter, Evelyn, or “Tan,” who danced maniacally behind the slow-moving casket.

Once most of the overflow crowd was seated, the testifying and singing began. City officials read proclamations from Gainesville and Archer—Gainesville mayor Pegeen Hanrahan announced to raucous applause that the city’s downtown square would soon be renamed Bo Diddley Plaza. Diddley’s grandson Garry Mitchell—wearing Diddley’s black leather cowboy hat with a silver eagle medallion in the front and two small badges on the side—spoke for the family. “Many times Grandpa and I would talk, almost in secret. Our conversations on his life and mine were almost intertwined,” said Mitchell. “I thank God for that cycle, because his legacy shall live on. Grandpa was awesome; he was way before Elvis Presley. He always got up way early, so early that he tapped the roosters on the shoulder and said: ‘You forgot to crow, because I’m already here.’”

Though Diddley didn’t succumb to the pitfalls of rock and roll—he never did drugs, and drank only occasionally—religion was never a huge part of his life until near the end. “The night he died, all of us were gathered around him. He grabbed my hand, told me he loved me,” says co-manager Margo Lewis. “His friend Sam Green began singing the old spiritual ‘Walk Around Heaven.’ He was in and out but when Sam finished, he sat up, shook Sam’s hand and said, ‘Whoa.’ He knew he was on his way.”

And Diddley was truly sent out in style. As his longtime backing band—led by Debby Hastings, his bandmate of the past twenty-five years—softly played his signature song, “Bo Diddley,” his casket was wheeled out into the steamy Florida sun. Brushing past flower arrangements sent by acolytes like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, George Thorogood, and Jerry Lee Lewis, Diddley’s casket was loaded into the hearse as tears streamed down many faces. He was gone, but the Originator of rock and roll was finally going home.