Bo Knew Diddley

Thanks to the Internet: Bo Diddley's Mississippi birth name was Elias Bates and his name upon his Chicago adoption was Elias McDaniel. Bo learned Diddley on Maxwell Street on Chicago's South Side. If this is (fair & balanced) rhythm, so be it.

[x YouTub/Bo Diddley

Bo Diddley, Rock Pioneer, Dies at 79
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:20 p.m. ET

Jacksonville, FL (AP) — Bo Diddley, a founding father of rock 'n' roll whose distinctive "shave and a haircut, two bits" rhythm and innovative guitar effects inspired legions of other musicians, died Monday after months of ill health. He was 79.

Diddley died of heart failure at his home in Archer, Fla., spokeswoman Susan Clary said. He had suffered a heart attack in August, three months after suffering a stroke while touring in Iowa. Doctors said the stroke affected his ability to speak, and he had returned to Florida to continue rehabilitation.

The legendary singer and performer, known for his homemade square guitar, dark glasses and black hat, was an inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, had a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, and received a lifetime achievement award in 1999 at the Grammy Awards. In recent years he also played for the elder President Bush and President Clinton.

Diddley appreciated the honors he received, "but it didn't put no figures in my checkbook."

"If you ain't got no money, ain't nobody calls you honey," he quipped.

The name Bo Diddley came from other youngsters when he was growing up in Chicago, he said in a 1999 interview.

"I don't know where the kids got it, but the kids in grammar school gave me that name," he said, adding that he liked it so it became his stage name. Other times, he gave somewhat differing stories on where he got the name. Some experts believe a possible source for the name is a one-string instrument used in traditional blues music called a diddley bow.

His first single, "Bo Diddley," introduced record buyers in 1955 to his signature rhythm: bomp ba-bomp bomp, bomp bomp, often summarized as "shave and a haircut, two bits." The B side, "I'm a Man," with its slightly humorous take on macho pride, also became a rock standard.

The company that issued his early songs was Chess-Checkers records, the storied Chicago-based labels that also recorded Chuck Berry and other stars.

Howard Kramer, assistant curator of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, said in 2006 that Diddley's Chess recordings "stand among the best singular recordings of the 20th century."

Diddley's other major songs included, "Say Man," "You Can't Judge a Book by Its Cover," "Shave and a Haircut," "Uncle John," "Who Do You Love?" and "The Mule."

Diddley's influence was felt on both sides of the Atlantic. Buddy Holly borrowed the bomp ba-bomp bomp, bomp bomp rhythm for his song "Not Fade Away."

The Rolling Stones' bluesy remake of that Holly song gave them their first chart single in the United States, in 1964. The following year, another British band, the Yardbirds, had a Top 20 hit in the U.S. with their version of "I'm a Man."

Diddley was also one of the pioneers of the electric guitar, adding reverb and tremelo effects. He even rigged some of his guitars himself.

"He treats it like it was a drum, very rhythmic," E. Michael Harrington, professor of music theory and composition at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., said in 2006.

Many other artists, including the Who, Bruce Springsteen and Elvis Costello copied aspects of Diddley's style.

Growing up, Diddley said he had no musical idols, and he wasn't entirely pleased that others drew on his innovations.

"I don't like to copy anybody. Everybody tries to do what I do, update it," he said. "I don't have any idols I copied after."

"They copied everything I did, upgraded it, messed it up. It seems to me that nobody can come up with their own thing, they have to put a little bit of Bo Diddley there," he said.

Despite his success, Diddley claimed he only received a small portion of the money he made during his career. Partly as a result, he continued to tour and record music until his stroke. Between tours, he made his home near Gainesville in north Florida.

"Seventy ain't nothing but a damn number," he told The Associated Press in 1999. "I'm writing and creating new stuff and putting together new different things. Trying to stay out there and roll with the punches. I ain't quit yet."

Diddley, like other artists of his generations, was paid a flat fee for his recordings and said he received no royalty payments on record sales. He also said he was never paid for many of his performances.

"I am owed. I've never got paid," he said. "A dude with a pencil is worse than a cat with a machine gun."

In the early 1950s, Diddley said, disc jockeys called his type of music, "Jungle Music." It was Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed who is credited with inventing the term "rock 'n' roll."

Diddley said Freed was talking about him, when he introduced him, saying, "Here is a man with an original sound, who is going to rock and roll you right out of your seat."

Diddley won attention from a new generation in 1989 when he took part in the "Bo Knows" ad campaign for Nike (NYSE:NKE) , built around football and baseball star Bo Jackson. Commenting on Jackson's guitar skills, Diddley turned to the camera and said, "He don't know Diddley."

"I never could figure out what it had to do with shoes, but it worked," Diddley said. "I got into a lot of new front rooms on the tube."

Born as Ellas Bates on Dec. 30, 1928, in McComb, Miss., Diddley was later adopted by his mother's cousin and took on the name Ellis McDaniel, which his wife always called him.

When he was 5, his family moved to Chicago, where he learned the violin at the Ebenezer Baptist Church. He learned guitar at 10 and entertained passers-by on street corners.

By his early teens, Diddley was playing Chicago's Maxwell Street.

"I came out of school and made something out of myself. I am known all over the globe, all over the world. There are guys who have done a lot of things that don't have the same impact that I had," he said.


Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press

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Does Poly Want A Cracker?

FLASH!
Judge Orders Return Of Sect’s Children
By The Associated Press
Filed at 11:02 a.m. ET, 06/02/08

San Angelo, Texas (AP) — A judge on Monday ordered the return of more than 400 children taken from a polygamist group's ranch, following the state Supreme Court ruling that the state's seizure of the youngsters wasn't justified.

The order signed by Texas District Judge Barbara Walther allowed parents to begin picking up their children at 10 a.m. CDT.

In exchange for regaining custody, the parents are not being allowed to leave Texas without court permission and must participate in parenting classes. They were also ordered not to interfere with any child abuse investigation and to allow the children to undergo psychiatric or medical exams if required.

Copyright © 2008 Ben Sargent

The PR disaster in the Lone Star State plays on. The 400+ children seized by the Texas Child Protective Services (CPS) Division have been ordered back to the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Deep West Texas. The YFZ Ranch was established by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints (FLDS) as a haven in a heartless world for its believers in "The Principle" (of polygyny, i.e., multiple wives to a single husband). The guru (Warren Jeffs) of this offshoot of the LDS (Mormon) Church is now in the sneezer in Utah for 10 years to life (actually two consecutive prison terms of five years to life) for his conviction on two counts of being an accomplice to rape. The rape involved the "spiritual marriage" of a 14-year-old girl to a man who was her first cousin. Prophet Jeffs presided over the "spiritual marriage." Interestingly, the FLDS temple on the YFZ Ranch has a bedroom (a room with a bed in it) on an upper floor of the building. The explanation offered by the Ranch spokesman is that the "bedroom" was for worshippers who might need a "nap" during lengthy worship services. Gee, don't all churches provide accomodations for those who nap during worship services? Nonetheless, the children of the YFZ Ranch are in limbo in foster homes scattered around the second-largest state in the Union. Personally, I am Yearning For Resolution (of this mess). If this is a (fair & balanced) paradox, so be it.

¹[x The Scientific Fundamentalist]
The Paradox Of Polygamy I: Why Most Americans Are Polygamous
By Satoshi Kanazawa

Polygyny has been in the public eye and many Americans’ water-cooler conversations lately, from the success of the HBO series "Big Love" to the trial of the Mormon sect leader Warren Jeffs. Most Americans consider polygynous marriage to be exotic, unusual, bizarre, and even morally wrong, hence the attraction of "Big Love" or the titillation of the Jeffs’ trial. But polygyny is not that exotic; many — even most — Americans are already in polygynous marriages.

First, let’s get our terms straight. Polygyny is the scientific term for a marriage of one man to more than one woman. Polygamy refers to both polygyny and polyandry
— marriage of one woman to more than one man. Polygamy is often used synonymously with polygyny because there are very few polyandrous societies in the world.

Of course, simultaneous polygyny, of the kind depicted in Big Love and practiced by Jeffs, is illegal in all 50 states. However, many Americans (and others) practice serial polygyny, through a series of marriage, divorce, and remarriage. For all practical purposes, the consequences of serial polygyny are exactly the same as those of simultaneous polygyny.

When a man like Bill Henrickson — the fictional polygynist on "Big Love" — has three wives simultaneously, the mathematical consequence, given a roughly 50-50 sex ratio, is that he is depriving two other men of their reproductive opportunities. Two other men cannot have a wife and children because Henrickson has three wives. When Donald Trump has had three wives sequentially, he too deprived two other men of their reproductive opportunities, because by the time he divorced his previous wives, they were past their reproductive age. The strongest predictor of remarriage after divorce is sex; men typically remarry, women typically don’t. Neither Ivana Trump nor Marla Maples remarried after divorce from Trump (although Ivana was briefly married without children before Trump).

Extramarital affairs are another means of polygynous mating, and married men are more likely to engage in affairs than married women. When a monogamously married man has two unmarried mistresses or girlfriends, the consequence is essentially the same; he is depriving two other men of their mating opportunities. So any man who’s ever divorced and remarried, any woman who’s ever married a divorced man, any married man who’s ever had long-term affairs, or any woman who’s ever had affairs with married men, are all practicing polygyny at some level, with the same consequences as simultaneous polygyny of Henrickson and Jeffs.

Whether simultaneous or serial, polygyny is common because humans are naturally polygynous. Scientists agree that anthropological and archeological evidence shows conclusively that humans have been mildly polygynous throughout evolutionary history. (But remember the danger of the naturalistic fallacy — deriving moral implications from scientific facts. “Natural” means neither “good” nor “desirable.” Nor does it mean “inevitable.”) Humans are not as polygynous as gorillas, whose silverback males keep a harem of several females, but not strictly monogamous like gibbons, whose male and female mate for life.

In the next post, I’ll address the question of who benefits from polygynous society: men or women? The answer might surprise you.

[Satoshi Kanazawa is an evolutionary psychologist, Reader in Management at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Psychology at University College London, and in the Department of Psychology at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the coauthor (with the late Alan S. Miller) of Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters (Perigee, 2007).

Satoshi Kanazawa's Psychology Today blog is "The Scientific Fundamentalist."]

²[The Scientific Fundamentalist]
The Paradox Of Polygamy II: Why Most Women Benefit From Polygamy And Most Men Benefit From Monogamy
By Satoshi Kanazawa

Contrary to popular belief, most women benefit from polygynous society, and most men benefit from monogamous society. This is because polygynous society allows some women to share a resourceful man of high status. George Bernard Shaw (who was one of the founders of the London School of Economics and Political Science where I teach) put it best, when he observed, “The maternal instinct leads a woman to prefer a tenth share in a first rate man to the exclusive possession of a third rate one.”

Or, as the comedian Bill Maher asked his panel on his TV show "Politically Incorrect" on January 7, 1998, “Would you rather be the second or third wife of Mel Gibson or the only wife of Willard Scott?”, to which one of the panelists, the conservative commentator and activist Susan Carpenter McMillan, responded, “If it comes to Mel Gibson, I wouldn’t care if I was one, two, or three.” Of course, this was back when Mel Gibson was highly desirable. Substitute Matt Damon for Mel Gibson. The cast of characters changes in a decade, but the principle remains the same.

In contrast, most men benefit from monogamous society. Given a 50-50 sex ratio, monogamous society virtually guarantees a wife for every man, even a third-rate one. Under polygyny, some third-rate men may not find a wife at all, or, even if they are lucky enough to find one, their wife will not be as desirable as the one they can secure for themselves under monogamy, because under polygyny more desirable women would have become the second, third, or tenth wife of more desirable men.

The exceptions to this rule are highly desirable women, who benefit from monogamous society, and highly desirable men, who benefit from polygynous society. A highly desirable woman can marry a highly desirable man under any circumstances, but under polygyny she’d have to share her desirable husband with other women, whereas under monogamy she can monopolize him. A highly desirable man can acquire multiple wives under polygyny, but must confine himself to only one wife (albeit a highly desirable one) under monogamy.

It’s the nature of the statistical (“bell curve”) distribution, however, that most people are not extreme on either side; for example, most people are not extremely tall or extremely short, but of more or less average height. Similarly, most men and women are neither extremely desirable nor extremely undesirable. So most men benefit under monogamy, and most women benefit under polygyny.

When men imagine what living in a polygynous society might be like, they imagine themselves married to several wives. What they don’t realize, however, is that, more than likely, they would be left without any wife in a polygynous society. Polygynous marriage in a polygynous society is always limited to a minority of men. If 50% of men have two wives each, then the other 50% cannot have any wives. If 25% of men have four wives each, then the other 75% cannot have any wives. When women imagine what living in a polygynous society might be like, they imagine themselves having to share their current, no-good loser of a husband with other women. What they don’t realize is that they could be sharing Matt Damon or Bill Gates with other women.

Once we begin to look at things through the lens of evolutionary psychology and biology, they start to look quite different. Something that we previously thought was quite bizarre and morally wrong, like polygyny, begins to look quite natural and common. The perspective also gives us a new insight, like how women, not men, mostly benefit in polygynous societies.

[Satoshi Kanazawa is an evolutionary psychologist, Reader in Management at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Psychology at University College London, and in the Department of Psychology at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the coauthor (with the late Alan S. Miller) of Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters (Perigee, 2007).

Satoshi Kanazawa's Psychology Today blog is "The Scientific Fundamentalist."]

Copyright © 2008 Psychology Today

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