Bo Diddley…Bo Diddley
My new favorite song is Bob Seger‘s version of Bo Diddley, from his early 1970′s record of covers, Smokin’ O.P.’s (as in “Smoking Other People’s”).
I vaguely remembering hearing this a time or two back in the early 80′s when I was doing AOR radio, but not enough for it to be anything less than fresh today. I came across it during a listening session with the band and have been working on transcribing the drum part for the last several days.
Bo Diddley has an interesting story behind it.
The rhythm (christened the “Bo Diddley beat”) is actually based on the “hambone” rhythm, which dates back several hundred years to musicians of West Africa. The lyrics, based on the American folksong, Mockingbird, were not the original lyrics written by Diddley. The original lyrics, for a song called Uncle John, were deemed to dirty for white American radio by Leonard Chess, so Bo went back and adapted the lyric.
As much as I like the original, I think this version has a killer groove.
