Lyrics | Artists | Bo Diddley

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Bo Diddley

Growing up in Chicago as Ellas McDaniel (the name of his adoptive mother), Bo Diddley studied trombone and violin at his local Baptist church, played in an orchestra until he was 18 and, diverted by the exciting rhythms he heard at a Pentecostal church, took up the guitar. He worked as a carpenter and mechanic but, busking on the streets of Chicago in his spare time, was offered a club residency. He adopted the name Bo Diddley from the title of his first hit single in 1955, a simple but irrepressibly infectious guitar riff, indelibly defined by its mix of African rhythms with ful...