Headline has run on Bloomberg, no story yet.
Damn that caught me off guard, but I guess I also never thought about how old he actually was.
I loved his music and his beat. One of my favorites.
He was cantankerous, mean, self-absorbed, and arrogant, but he was a true creator. Thanks, Bo, for the music.
…bomp, ba-bomp-bomp, bomp-bomp
So many greats have him to thank in part. Damn.
Dr. Johnny Fever: “Who’ll teach the kids about Bo Diddley if I’m gone?”
A classic artist who touched virtually every other guitar player in the world. RIP
My dad saw Bo Diddley play at a festival in 1955. Most of the black music acts at the time (and at the festival) were matching suits and smooth crooning, and Bo Diddley and his crew took the stage with this frenetic rock-and-roll and crazy outfits completely unlike anything he’d ever seen or heard, and just tore the place up. He’s been a lifelong fan ever since, even called him at his house a few years ago to wish him happy birthday.
You were one of a kind, Originator, and you’ll be missed.
I was fortunate enough to see Bo Diddley perform two times, both in small clubs. Even in his last years he was an amazing entertainer.
Well, fuck. Another legend passes on. RIP.
I went through my iTunes playlist and counted up songs with the Bo Diddley Beat, and came up with:
I Want Candy (The Strangeloves)
Who Do You Love? (George Thorogood)
Willie and the Hand Jive (Johnny Otis)
Not Fade Away (Rolling Stones)
bomp bomp bomp…ba-bomp bomp
Bo Diddley, Bo Diddley,
rest in peace …
Damn, another one down. If anyone reading this thread isn’t familliar with arguably the greatest song to ever blur the lines between Blues and Rock and Roll, you owe it to yourself to hear one of the most ferocious songs ever to come out of the early 60’s You Can’t Judge a Book
Say “Hello” to Muddy and Wolf for us Bo.
The closest I ever came to meeting a famous person was the day he came through the drive-through at the McDonalds where I worked. This was about ten years ago. Well, I did meet him, he just wasn’t famous to me. He asked me if I knew who he was and I said no, so he told me, and then a bunch of other employees came running to hang out the window and talk to him. I went to get a drink.
Sorry, but that’s my Bo Diddley story. I don’t even remember what he ordered.
Being a guitar player, I’d say Bo Diddley definitely had an influence on me and just about every guitar player (okay maybe not Segovia … but then again … 
)
As others have said, I never thought he was that old.
It is a shame that this guy who preceded just about everybody didn’t reap much fame or fortune. I remember reading a quote of his “I opened the door for a lot of people. Unfortunately, they ran right through and left me holding the doorknob.”
Another song with the Bo Diddley beat? How about Elvis Presley’s “(And Marie’s the Name Of) His Latest Flame”?
RIP Bo Diddley
No disrespect intended, but I honestly thought he was already gone.
I remember watching Trading Places and seeing his name in the credits as the pawn broker (“Round here it’s worth fifty dollars”) and wondering if it was the same guy. (It was.) Don’t know if that was a career nadir or not, but he did get some revenant respect before he died, playing in some fairly big venues after years of relative obscurity.
In any case, RIP.
I love that scene! I always assumed that role was Aykroyd and Landis’s way of making it up to him that they didn’t squeeze him into The Blues Brothers.
Gstaad!
Magic Bus
A nitpick to my own post above- the actual exchange appears below. Disgraced stock broker Louis Winthorpe III (Dan Akroyd) is attempting to pawn his only item of value, a Rouchefoucauld sports watch, to a pawnbroker played by Bo Diddley.
Pawnbroker: Burnt my fingers, man.
Louis: I beg your pardon?
Pawnbroker: Man, that watch is so hot, it’s smokin’.
Louis: Hot? Do you mean to imply stolen?
Pawnbroker: I’ll give you 50 bucks for it.
Louis: Fifty bucks? No, no, no. This is a Rouchefoucauld. The thinnest water-resistant watch in the world. Singularly unique, sculptured in design, hand-crafted in Switzerland, and water resistant to three atmospheres. This is the sports watch of the '80s. Six thousand, nine hundred and fifty five dollars retail!
Pawnbroker: You got a receipt?
Louis: Look, it tells time simultaneously in Monte Carlo, Beverly Hills, London, Paris, Rome, and Gstaad.
Pawnbroker: And in Philadelphia, it’s worth 50 bucks.
This brought Bo Diddley to more people’s consciousness than any of his songs did. Sportscenter closed the show with a memoriam of him today as did PTI.
His ashes to repose in a special, cigar box-shaped urn
(OK - I almost had some of you. Somewhat credible since Screamin’ Jay Hawkins performed in a casket and was buried in…a casket)