I’m not usually one for celebrity news and I reserve my grieving for those I know and care about, but today’s passing of Bo Diddley made me feel real bad. Maybe because Bo was sort of an underdog character and we tend to feel compassion for underdogs, or maybe listening to his music over and over again made me feel close to him. If my copy of Chess Records Bo Diddley - His Best was a vinyl LP instead of a CD, I would have worn the grooves off long ago. If you don’t know Bo, then you don’t know diddley about Rock & Roll! As far as I’m concerned the man is the founder of the genre and partially responsible for the term itself. One story goes that legendary concert promoter Alan Freed introduced him at a concert by saying “This performer will rock and roll you out of your seats” coining the phrase Rock & Roll. His music was so far ahead of it’s time that I sometimes have to check to see when something was recorded, and I am usually blown away. George Thorogood can still bring a crowd to it’s feet (and get occasional radio play) with Who Do you Love, and Bo recorded it in 1956! If you think of Before You Accuse Me as a Clapton song, Bo recorded it in 1957 when Eric was 12 years old. The list of musicians who covered Bo’s songs and copied his style goes on and on, and takes in every decade. Bo knew it too, he once said “I was the first dude out there”, and in 1967 released an album called The Originator.  The man may be gone, but his brand of rythym driven, guitar oriented, soul on the sleeve Rock & Roll won’t ever leave us.