American rock and roll singer. He was taken to Chicago at the age of five, and soon after began violin lessons, which he continued for 12 years. He grew up with black gospel music and the delta blues players of Chicago’s southside, but he was most strongly influenced by Nat ‘King’ Cole, Louis Jordan, and John Lee Hooker, whose Boogie Chillen inspired him to play guitar. He formed a street-corner band, which attracted enough attention to be granted an audition with Chess Records in 1954. In early 1955 Bo Diddley (Checker) was released as a single and reached number 2 in the rhythm and blues chart. It had bragging, nonsense lyrics, like many of his later songs, but its chief appeal lay in its shimmering rumba rhythm and violent, primitive guitar playing. Diddley stood outside the mainstream of rock and roll of the 1950s; he recorded unusual jazz instrumental pieces with weird sound-effects, doo-wop songs, blues, idiosyncratic rock and roll numbers, and rambling insult battles with Jerome Green, his maracas player.
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