"The Originator" Bo Diddley Passes Away

Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame member Bo Diddley passed away today at the age of 79. A spokeswoman said that Diddley died of heart failure after suffering a heart attack in August 2007. Three months before that he had suffered a stroke while touring in Iowa.

Doctors said the stroke affected his ability to speak, and he was undergoing rehabilitation near his Florida home. Funeral services are being planned for this weekend, with details to be announced.

Diddley, whose real name was Ellas Otha Bates McDaniel, was born on December 30, 1928, in Mississippi. His family moved to Chicago when he was seven and his earliest exposure to music came via the church. The first instrument he learned to play was the violin, although hearing John Lee Hooker’s 1949 hit "Boogie Chillen" inspired him to pick up the guitar, according to his bio on the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame Web site. Diddley claimed that playing the violin influenced his muted-string, choke-neck style of rhythm guitar.

Diddley became known for his signature square guitar and dark sunglasses, and his songs are considered to be amongst the first true Rock & Roll recordings. He was an early experimenter with fuzzy, distorted guitar sounds and integrated Blues, Rock and R&B into his rhythmic songs. He also invented the legendary "Bo Diddley beat" in Rock music. In his heyday in the '50s, Diddley recorded such seminal Rock songs as "I'm A Man," "Who Do You Love?," "Mona" and "Road Runner." He had a resurgence in the 1980s thanks to his cameo appearance as a pawn shop clerk in the movie Trading Places and his well-known Nike commercials with sports star Bo Jackson, in which he told Jackson, "Bo, you don’t know Diddley."

Guitar legend SLASH told NME.COM that Diddley greatly influenced countless musicians, and the Bo Diddley beat was the inspiration for GUNS N' ROSES' song "Mr. Brownstone". "He's a huge hero of mine and the fact that he knew who I was was a huge compliment," Slash said. "Bo Diddley created a myth that was uniquely his own. An entire rhythm is owed to just one guy and that's pretty rare," he said. Slash pointed out that Diddley touched a vast array of artists from THE ROLLING STONES to GEORGE THOROGOOD to GUNS N' ROSES. "He was such a trooper and a timeless individual. I'm hoping the pioneers of rock like Bo Diddley won't be forgotten."

Bo was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame in 1987 and continued touring regularly into his late 70s reports fmqb.com