Mailbag: Bo Diddley rocked, in more ways than one

I was interested to read your posting about Bo Diddley and Nikita Krrushchev. I had some similar experiences with Bo talking in a way that was very prideful about America. Some of the news coverage, like the AP piece, makes Bo sound bitter (like Chuck Berry), which, although he had every right to be, he was not. I knew his daughters and visited Bo's log cabin home on their ranch in Hawthorne, Florida, many times in the early- to mid- '80s. When Bo was not on long tours of Australia and Poland, he always had young people around for barbecues. He'd dig a pit, pile dead wood from the property six feet high and light it with gasoline. Then, watching a mushroom cloud go up, he'd say jokingly: "That's what you do to @*#*#*%@*# (fellas) that you don't like!"

Next, we'd gather around him in the kitchen while he cut and wrapped the wild boar meat in foil...he'd laugh and talk about opening for the Clash on their first U.S. tour. ("Nice kids, but they shouldn't play so loud."). He'd talk about how good we have it in the U.S. ("In Poland, we wouldn't be here talking like this...You gotta carry a card with you at all times that says where you're allowed to be and when, in case the police stop you!") He did a couple of songs around that time for an album that included Ain't It Good to be Free? and I Don't Want Your Welfare. He sure never made the money he deserved, but he never stopped trying to make it.

The last time I saw him play was at Monty's in the Grove in about '95. He played the Stephen Talkhouse on Miami Beach in about '91 and with Ron Wood at Woody's on the Beach in '87. He supported a lot people, both family and friends...everyone from grandkids, to young musicians, to old buddies like his videographer Gordon from a tour in Australia -- and a slew of dingos were all living at the ranch in those days.

He might have had one single sip of a Budweiser in all of the time that I was around him...because as on of the guys told me one day in the recording studio/barn, "Bo don't need to get high." That's so true. On each visit Bo was doing something new, welding a hood scoop on a car, making clay-mation monster videos...he never stopped creating.

David Bruce

Coral Gables, Florida

Thanks for sharing those memories, David. My own favorite memory associated with Bo Diddley goes back to sometime during high school, when I first heard Hey, Man on the radio, in which two vocalists needle each other about their girlfriends over Bo's staccato rhythm line. When one guy says of the other's girl that "she looked like she been whupped with a ugly stick," I laughed out loud. And all these years later, every time I hear it, still do.