Diddley Daddy

Last year it was 82-year-old John Lee Hooker, who headlined Antone’s Blues Festival at Waterloo Park; last month it was 75-year-old B.B King, who reigned supreme at his B.B. King Blues Festival on Auditorium Shores. Now it’s 71-year-old Bo Diddley, who plays La Zona Rosa on Saturday. The three most influential bluesmen alive, and all have passed through town during the past 18 months, just as they have periodically since the Fifties. Who says the blues don’t thrive in Austin anymore?

Like Hooker and King, Diddley — born Ellas Otha Bates McDaniel, December 30, 1928, in McComb, Mississippi — spoke with the Chronicle, and in a fashion consistent with the blues itself, often hit one note and one note only. Spare. Yes/no, next question, please. What does a veteran bluesman who’s lived through the race wars, written standards that will endure as long as the devil trades songs for souls down on the Delta, and enriched the world with music endemic to the American experience really have to say to some punk journalist on the other end of the phone line? In Diddley’s case, not a whole lot, unless it’s on the subject of being ripped off.

Long characterized as embittered over the fact that dozens and dozens of rock & roll classics have traded on the hip-grinding rhythm of his immortal “Bo Diddley Beat” without reaping him the monetary rewards they brought everyone from Buddy Holly (“Not Fade Away”) to Iggy Pop (“Lust For Life”), Diddley was only slightly cranky after being woken from an early-evening siesta at his home just outside Gainesville, Florida. Though our first interview was abruptly cut short by a fender-bender involving his daughter, it resumed a week later when the opening call-and-response wasn’t Q: “How are you?,” A: “Sleepy.” Oops. Sorry.

“Heh, heh,” rasped Diddley. “That’s okay.” Like the night almost 10 years ago he unsheathed his trademark square guitar at San Antonio’s now-deceased Cibolo Creek Country Club and nearly burned the place down, those “heh-heh’s” will stay with this punk journalist a long, long time.

Austin Chronicle: What is the Bo Diddley beat?

Bo Diddley: Well, it’s a rhythm pattern. And a drum beat that goes with it. A syncopation-type beat.

AC: Where did it come from?

BD: It was something I just did. I was trying to play [a song called] “I Got Squirrels” and accidentally came up with that. Accidentally like a scientist. I accidentally put something together and it came out something else.

AC: It’s a little like Ellington’s jungle beat.

BD: It could be, put into a primitive mode.

AC: Were you influenced by the Big Band sound? Swing music?

BD: No, I played violin for 12 years. I was taught classical music.

AC: Was rock & roll then a break from classical music?

BD: No, I just wanted to play a guitar. My sister bought me one and I taught myself.

AC: Built your own guitars?

BD: At one time, yeah.

AC: Did that have a lot to do with the sound you were getting, heavy distortion — almost psychedelic?

BD: No. I just wanted to make something.

AC: I’ve read John Lee Hooker was a big influence on you.

BD: No, I just heard John Lee playing when I was a kid, but I don’t sound like John Lee Hooker so it’s not an influence.

AC: So many of the great bluesmen — John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, yourself — were born in Mississippi.

BD: Well, the blues came out of the South because of the pain and suffering that was on people, ethnic people. And the farms and the times we were going through — that ignorant period of blacks and whites, you know. Suppression. We should have never been. But you got people’s spiritual music coming out of there, too. People make songs to let the world know about persecution.

AC: Let’s talk about some of the songs. Who was “Mona”? Did you know an actual “Mona”?

BD: Yeah, at one time I did. But it wasn’t a girlfriend of mine or nothing like that. She was a dancer in Austin, Texas. I think I saw her at the Eastwood Country Club. She was dancing onstage. She was a shake dancer.

(Someone calls “Hey Ellas” in the background, saying something to Diddley. “Somebody hit her?” he asks. “I’ll be right there.”)

BD: I gotta hurry up, my daughter just got in a wreck. Somebody just hit her in the back of her car.

AC: So “Mona” was here in Austin? That’ll be news to the locals.

BD: Heh, heh.

AC: Got some history here in Austin.

BD: Oh yeah, I got a lot there.

AC: Your only Top 20 hit, “Say Man,” has a line about Texas.

BD: [Laughs] Texas has been a very good state to me.

AC: You worked with Jimmie Vaughan on 1996’s A Man Amongst Men.

BD: Good bluesman. Well, gotta go. Tell my fans down in Austin I’ll see them soon. [Click.]

(One week later.)

AC: How’s your daughter?

BD: She’s okay. Somebody hit the back of her car.

AC: So was “Mona” really written about someone here in Austin?

BD: Yeah, that was years ago. She was a shake dancer — used to do a belly dance. Her name was Mona, so I told her I was going to write a song using that name. That’s what I did.

AC: Did writing songs come naturally?

BD: Not really. Usually somebody would say a word or a sentence and I’d take that and incorporate it into a whole set of lyrics, structured certain ways to avoid getting into “dirty” lyrics.

AC: You’ve been covered by so many people, have you —

BD: I’ve been robbed. Robbed. Covered is not the word. Robbed. The songs that were covered were good — that people thought enough of my material to cover it. But the money part that comes from that, it was total thievery. Total thievery. Not the artists, the people that handle the artists.

AC: You haven’t seen your fair share of publishing royalties?

BD: I haven’t seen shit, man.

AC: Really?

BD: I have to put it that way. I’m tired being nice about it.

AC: Does it bother you, then, to hear a cover of one of your songs?

BD: No. No. I love it.

AC: Do any stand out?

BD: Oh yeah. I won’t name them, because it’s not fair to the other ones.

AC: I always liked the version of “Crackin’ Up” you and Ronnie Wood did on 1988’s great Live at the Ritz. The song has a beautiful Caribbean lilt to it. Where did that come from?

BD: I have no idea, man. I just call myself a scientist of music — of rhythms and stuff.

AC: How important are maracas to rhythm?

BD: Very important!

AC: You certainly know it’s the Bo Diddley beat when you hear those maracas.

BD: Right. It’s a certain way you have to structure the song, and most people can’t get that same structure and feel. A lot of the dudes that do what they think they’re doing that’s supposed to be me is not right.

AC: Who were your favorite songwriters? You covered a few Willie Dixon songs.

BD: Yeah, Willie wrote a couple songs for me. He wrote “Hydromatic Love,” “You Can’t Judge A Book By Its Cover,” and “Pretty Thing.”

AC: Pretty good songwriter.

BD: Oh hell, he was Chess Records, period. He wrote for Muddy Waters, Little Walter — everybody. Willie was a monument, man. He got robbed, too. It’s called the good old American rip-off.

AC: You’ve written a handful of standards including “I’m a Man,” “Who Do You Love,” “Road Runner.”

BD: I’ve written songs and haven’t gotten credit for none of them. I sold my catalogue. They pushed me into a situation where I didn’t have no money, and the hippie thing was just getting off the ground — the Jimi Hendrix era, Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead — all of that. My type of music took a recess for a little while, and since we weren’t working that much, I had to go to the publishing company and try to get an advance.

The suckers wouldn’t give me no advance, but they decided they would buy my songs. Me being that I had to feed my kids, pay my rent. They forced me into selling my songs, and having no other means of income at that time, I was put in the position of doing something maybe I shouldn’t have done, because I didn’t have a legal counsel at that mess. Somebody that could have negotiated for a lot more than I took for them. But when you got hungry kids, man, you will do a lot of things that you would hardly ever do to feed you family. They had me by the bang-bang.

AC: Has that kept you working at a time maybe you’d rather be retired?

BD: Well, I should be working if I feel like it, but I have to work when I don’t feel like it. In other words, if I got paid — if someone would get up offa my change and send me what’s mine — it would be very nice, but I don’t think anybody’s gonna do that.

AC: How many dates a year do you do?

BD: Quite a few.

AC: Tired of the road?

BD: Not really, not really.

AC: What do you think of the current generation of blues players — the Jonny Langs, Susan Tedeschis?

BD: Some of them are very good, but they don’t understand what they’re playing. But they got it together.

AC: Is blues getting the respect it deserves?

BD: No. No. Blues is the foundation of all this music in America. A lot of people don’t understand it. They think it’s downer music, but it’s really not. You have to understand it. You have to put the blues in the framework where a person can understand what it really means.

AC: Why do diamond rings look so good on a bluesman’s hands?

BD: Well, I don’t know. I think it’s stupid to wear a bunch of diamonds and stuff in today’s society, because you’re asking for trouble. They look good, but all the diamonds you see are not real diamonds. A lot of guys don’t wear real jewelry. They wear costume jewelry, because it’s not smart to take a $30,000 ring and put it on your finger. Somebody’ll cut your finger off. [Chuckles.] So if you see me with one, I wear zircon: ‘Hey man, if you want this zircon, I got 10 more in my pocket.’ [Laughs.] Bo knows not to be stupid.

This article appears in Rick Perry.