The world lost another blues legend yesterday, Bo Diddley, to a heart attack at age 79.

Bo never played the Waterfront Blues Festival. I’d tried to get him to headline opening night on a couple of occasions, but the routing hadn’t worked out. I feel wistful about that now, though at the time, I was relieved it hadn’t panned out. Bo was a lone wolf in this busiiness, flying in solo to a gig with only his suit bag and guitar, stepping out on stage in front of whatever backup band the local promoter had pulled together. Particularly in his later years, Bo was known for unpredictable shows and ragged, unrehearsed backup bands—I should know because three years ago I played guitar in one of Bo’s backup bands.

July 7, 2005, just three days after Guitar Shorty closed the 17th Annual Waterfront Blues Festival, I hopped in the van with the other four members of the Paul delay Band and headed south on a week-long road trip of festivals and clubs in southern Oregon and California. Our first stop was North Bend, where we’d been asked to back Bo Diddley in a concert at the local high school auditorium. We’d arrived three hours before the show, allowing plenty of time to set up and run through the set with Bo.

When we arrived, Bo was hanging out in the ‘green room’ back stage. We’d heard stories about the cranky, self-absorbed old codger whose hits all seemed to be different takes on what a stud he was. He’d lived long enough to hear his revolutionary ‘Bo Diddley Beat’ guitar riff appropriated and taken to the bank by Buddy Holly, Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, scores of others. If ASCAP paid royalties on guitar riffs, Bo would have been a millionaire a hundred times over, and he made sure the world knew that he knew that.

But backstage Bo was friendly, funny, telling jokes and tall tales from his decades on the road. He didn’t seem remotely interested in rehearsing. He didn’t even quiz any of us Paul deLay Band members to see if we knew what we were doing. He regaled us for two hours, until showtime. We still hadn’t discussed the set list.

On stage, Bo dug into a rhythmic guitar figure for four bars and nodded to us to follow. After 50 years of leading unrehearsed bands through the paces, he’d figured out a few things about hand signals. Mostly what he’d learned was to ignore the band and go for the audience’s throat. 

The highschool auditorium was packed, a sold-out crowd of young as well as old: silver haired pre-boomers who must have been lindy-hopping to Bo’s Diddley Beat at highschool dances when “Who Do You Love?” first hit the charts; at the other extreme, Goth-kids in black with lots of facial hardware—death metal youngsters apparently dug Bo too. Bo Diddley had a cultural impact that reached across generations. He was one of the few elder bluesmen on the circuit who regularly played, and packed, edgy rock rooms like Portland’s Dante’s Inferno and Crystal Ballroom.

The rock historians continue to debate whether Bo or his arch-rival, Chuck Berry, provided the more important bridge from the delta to Rock ‘n Roll. Personally, Bo’s always had my vote. His early recordings—on many his vocals were accompanied by only his percussive guitar and Jerome Green’s maracas—defined as deep and compelling a groove to me as anything ever put on vinyl.

On the last number in North Bend, Bo put down his guitar, walked around behind the drums, grabbed a pair of sticks and joined our drummer, Jeff Minnick, putting the double whammy on a Bo Diddley beat.

The crowd went nuts, giving Bo a standing ovation. 

After the concert, we hopped in our van and headed south. Bo was scheduled to play Bend the next day, using another unrehearsed backup band. An heir to a lumber fortune, we heard, had offered to fly Bo over the Cascades in his private jet. The concert promoter had a little surprise aboard for the 75-year-old Diddley: The airline hostesses hired for that flight, we heard, were exotic dancers.

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Paul deLay Band pianist David Vest, pictured above with Bo Diddley, in a photo taken on a band cell phone, recalls our hang in North Bend below. Vest will appear opening night July 3 of this year’s Waterfront Blues Festival with Northwest Pianorama, a three-piano boogie-woogie melée.

I enjoyed sitting and talking backstage with Bo about the old days in Birmingham, when he used to stay at the legendary A. G. Gaston Motel and play the big package shows at the Municipal Auditorium, where I saw him in 1960. I paid $2 to see Bo Diddley, Big Joe Turner, Lavern Baker, Clyde McPhatter, Hank Ballard, Sam Cooke and the Coasters. He remembered the shows clearly, and talked about the six-speaker cabinets that he built to get his sound in those days.

I had the good fortune to see Bo Diddley in his prime. He wasn’t an oldies act in 1960, he was a major rock and roll star, and his effect on an audience was beyond devastating.

It was a big thrill for me when he plugged his guitar into my Roland Jazz Chorus 120 amp in North Bend.

He walked with a slight limp because he had lost a couple of toes to diabetes.

I also recall that someone backstage gave Bo a toy ukelele — I think the promoter brought it — and he started playing the Bo Diddley beat on it, and making up words like, “Monkey and a tiger, playing Seven-Up; monkey won the monkey but he scared to pick it up,” and so on. It was obvious that nothing gave him greater pleasure than just being creative and making up cool stuff, which seemed to flow out of him like a river. People talk about how bitter he was about the business, but around musicians he was full of joy.

I remember our bassist, Dave Kahl,  being very helpful to Bo, because he knew the drill and had done it a couple of times before. And Jeff Minnick got a big thrill when Bo joined him on the riser during his exit and played drums along with him.

Paul [deLay] was very shy around Bo. Maybe he was just being cool. I doubt if anyone could have imagined we would lose both of them so soon.

For David Vest’s postscript to this reflection, see: http://davidvest.blogspot.com/2008/06/backstage-with-bo.html

• • • •

Blues historian, promoter, manager, photographer—and Waterfront Blues Festival at-large-advisor—Dick Waterman, recalled this scene, posted on Blues-L, the newsgroup for blues nerds:

I was sitting backstage at the Mississippi Gulf Coast Coliseum some years ago with Bo Diddley and B.B. King listening to Kenny Wayne Shepherd open the show. It must have been around 1994 because the blues stamps had been issued and I brought along a sheet to show to B.B.

Bo turned to B.B. and said, “You should be on a stamp, man! You the ‘King of the Blues.’ They got to put you on a stamp.”

B.B. looked at him for a long while and said, “I’m in no hurry to be on a stamp. You got to be dead to be on a stamp.”

Bo thought about it for a minute and then said, “Well, f–k it then. I don’t ever want to be on no stamp.”