The Bo Diddly Rhythm

[Joseph]

Read in newspaper "USA Today" that Guitarist Bo Diddly passed away.

From the article:

"The Bo Diddly rhythm is the pulse beat of the universe....so primal and basic is that 5/4 "hambone" syncopation, introduced on his first self named hit ("Bo Diddly") derived from ancient African rhythms and overlaid with tremolo guitar"....

....." His professional name probably derives from the one stringed southern instrument called the diddly bow on which his famed rhythm was often played"

I don't know about the "5/4" mentioned in the above statement, bit when I listen to Bo Diddly, or music with the
"Bo Diddly rhythm", I hear clave rhythm, superimposed / fused with American rock & roll, and rhythm & blues.

Bo Diddly never became a superstar, and his success was fleeting, but his introduction of clave rhythm into rock and blues influenced the styles of multiple generations of rockers.

Bo Diddly
Rest in Peace

[davidpenalosa]

I’ve read a lot of things about musicians and music by people who were not actually that knowledge about music. I think that’s the case here. The "Bo Dildly Beat" can be written any number of ways, but they are all derivatives of 4/4, not 5 anything.

[Mike]

5/4 "hambone" syncopation

I also think the music journalist writing about rhythm was slightly unprecise, because he surely did not mean odd metres like 5/4.

What the Bo Diddley rhythmin question consists of is basically a 3-2 clave pattern indeed, as Joseph has already pointed out.

This rhythm has been employed by rock artists ever since Bo Diddley came up with this pattern.
One example is U2´s song "Desire".
It would be interesting to find out more about this entanglement between Afro-Cuban and R&B rhythmic structure.
This double acculturation so to speak sould be left to the experts though...
Over to ... David?

[windhorse]

Maybe it meant 5 strokes in a 4/4 structure.

[davidpenalosa]

Thanks Mike,
I'm nothing close to an expert on that, although I have searched quite a bit for information on the subject. There's a surprising lack of research out there. One problem is that until relatively recently, there's been very little acknowledgment of a Cuban connection in African-American music. African-American rhythmic motifs such as the Bo Diddly Beat have been explained simply as evidence of African retention in North America. I excepted that theory until sometime in the early 90's. Now I’m not so sure.

Even those books that do deal with the Afro-Cuban influence on African-American music do not differentiate between single-cell structures, which have been used in the US since at least the 1850's, and straight-forward, two-celled, overt clave-based motifs like the Bo Diddly Beat. I believe the use of overt clave motifs in African-American music started in the 1940's. Thomas has recently made me aware of more clave-tinged elements in early jazz than I was aware of before though, and I may need to modify my opinion on this subject.

There's sufficient evidence that tresillo-based single-celled structures were retained in African-American folk music independent of any Cuban influence. I don't imagine that the African-American ring shout churches or the Mississippi drum and fife groups of the Nineteenth Century were influenced by Cuban popular music.

Perhaps clave itself was retained in some African-American folk music I haven't heard and the Cuban influence merely brought out a latent sensibility that was already there. I just haven't heard or seen the evidence. In his great book "Africa and the Blues", Gerhard Kubik devotes an entire chapter to what he calls "A Strange Absence"; "... the very specific absence of asymmetrical time-line [clave-like] patterns in virtually all early 20th Century U.S. African American music." He says they were probably absent in the U.S from the start.

In 1972 Kubik recorded the last surviving exponent of the Mississippi drum and fife music, 89 year old Othar Turner. While mentioning the clearly African-based syncopation of that drumming, Kubik says flat out that it has no time-line pattern - "in spite of its various verbalized rhythms such as 'Granny, will your dog bite? No child, no!'" Interestingly, if you tap you hand to the rhythm of "Granny, will your dog bite? No child, no!", you will see that it is an embellishment of son clave. So, as fuzzy as the "latent clave" idea may be, it could be the correct answer to the question.

We see clave as a time-line pattern entering jazz in the 1940’s. Mario Bauza with Machito initiated the practice at the beginning of the decade and Dizzy Gillespie brought it to the forefront of the mainstream by the end of the decade.

By the late 40’s and early 50’s New Orleans musicians like Dave Bartholemew and Professor Longhair were borrowing Cuban elements from the son, mambo and conga and effortlessly mixing it with R&B and rock & roll. Bartholemew openly identified his Cuban influences and the New Orleans "mambos" were undoubtedly inspired by popular Cuban music of that era. However, while Bo Diddly came up during this same time, the origins of his overt clave motif remain a mystery to me. What effect if any, did Cuban music have on Bo Diddly?

R&B artist Johnny Otis also used a similar clave motif. From what I have been able to gather though, Bo Diddly did it earlier.

I feel I should mention that what we call "son clave" is in the words of Ghanaian master drummer C. K. Ladzekpo an "ancient bell pattern". It was the first African timeline pattern to be transcribed (1920) and ethnomusicologists have documented its use in West, Central and East Africa.

Dave,
I agree that the author was probably referring to the number of strokes rather than a time signature. It’s one of many examples of writers talking about music without having basic music language skills.
-David

[Mike]

There's sufficient evidence that tresillo-based single-celled structures were retained in African-American folk music independent of any Cuban influence. I don't imagine that the African-American ring shout churches or the Mississippi drum and fife groups of the Nineteenth Century were influenced by Cuban popular music.

Perhaps clave itself was retained in some African-American folk music I haven't heard and the Cuban influence merely brought out a latent sensibility that was already there. I just haven't heard or seen the evidence. In his great book "Africa and the Blues", Gerhard Kubik devotes an entire chapter to what he calls "A Strange Absence"; "... the very specific absence of asymmetrical time-line [clave-like] patterns in virtually all early 20th Century U.S. African American music." He says they were probably absent in the U.S from the start.

In 1972 Kubik recorded the last surviving exponent of the Mississippi drum and fife music, 89 year old Othar Turner. While mentioning the clearly African-based syncopation of that drumming, Kubik says flat out that it has no time-line pattern - "in spite of its various verbalized rhythms such as 'Granny, will your dog bite? No child, no!'" Interestingly, if you tap you hand to the rhythm of "Granny, will your dog bite? No child, no!", you will see that it is an embellishment of son clave. So, as fuzzy as the "latent clave" idea may be, it could be the correct answer to the question.

Now, that is interesting information indeed! Thanks for sharing all this. It seems to be difficult to "prove" a latent clave of course.
And besides, I can´t help it, you´are really an expert, David, for who could formulate as precisely and profoundly investigated
as the likes of Thomas Altmann and you?

P.S.: I will use the verbalized rhythm with "Granny.." when teaching clave-oriented music to smaller children, it is very useful to
understand which beat to stress. It is an alternative to anything like "Pa-na-ma Pa-na-ma Cu-ba" etc.

[Joseph]

Reading a bit online @ Bo Did
From wikipedia...don't have the extensive reference library David has

Bo Diddley was well known for the "Bo Diddley beat," a rumba-like beat (see clave), similar to "hambone", a style used by street performers who play out the beat by slapping and patting their arms, legs, chest, and cheeks while chanting rhymes. Referred to as a "shave and a haircut" beat, Diddley came across it while trying to play Gene Autry's "(I've Got Spurs That) Jingle, Jangle, Jingle".[5] Three years before Bo's "Bo Diddley", a song that closely resembles it, "Hambone," was cut by Red Saunders' Orchestra with The Hambone Kids.

In its simplest form, the Bo Diddley beat can be counted out as a two-bar phrase:

"One and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and..." The bolded counts are the clave rhythm.

His songs (for example, "Hey Bo Diddley" and "Who Do You Love?") often have no chord changes; that is, the musicians play the same chord throughout the piece, so that the rhythms create the excitement, rather than having the excitement generated by harmonic tension and release. In his own recordings, Bo Diddley used a variety of rhythms, from straight back beat to pop ballad style, frequently with maracas by Jerome Green.

I don't know how authoritative that quote is....
....picked it up while playing Gene Autry's "(I've Got Spurs That) Jingle, Jangle, Jingle"???

David Wrote
By the late 40’s and early 50’s New Orleans musicians like Dave Bartholemew and Professor Longhair were borrowing Cuban elements from the son, mambo and conga and effortlessly mixing it with R&B and rock & roll. Bartholemew openly identified his Cuban influences and the New Orleans "mambos" were undoubtedly inspired by popular Cuban music of that era. However, while Bo Diddly came up during this same time, the origins of his overt clave motif remain a mystery to me. What effect if any, did Cuban music have on Bo Diddly?

....Cuban influence merely brought out a latent sensibility that was already there. I just haven't heard or seen the evidence.

Idle speculation on my part, but as you indicated, the gumbo was already stewing when Bo came along.
He just made clave the dominant seasoning to his rhythm and blues roux.

His songs often have no chord changes; that is, the musicians play the same chord throughout the piece, so that the rhythms create the excitement, rather than having the excitement generated by harmonic tension and release

That aspect of his music rings particularly African to me.

~Joseph

[davidpenalosa]

[quote="Joseph"] "shave and a haircut" beat, Diddley came across it while trying to play Gene Autry's "(I've Got Spurs That) Jingle, Jangle, Jingle".[5] Three years before Bo's "Bo Diddley", a song that closely resembles it, "Hambone," was cut by Red Saunders' Orchestra with The Hambone Kids.

I don't hear the resemblance to the Gene Autry song. I would love to hear "Hambone" by Red Saunders' Orchestra. At itunes I sampled "Hambone" done in both 3-2 and 2-3. I read once that Johnny Otis learned the similarly clave-based "hand-jive" rhythm from an old Mississippi black man.
-David

[alabubba]

I theorize that the musicians in New Orleans had already integrated the clave before Bo brought the rhythm into the mainstream of rock, and very likely was one of his influences. But I came along too late to be sure...this is certainly a topic for the music historians to research.

[davidpenalosa]

There's no doubt that offbeat/onbeat rhythmic motifs that could be considered expressions of clave have existed in New Orleans and in jazz in general, for decades. The question I have is when did OVERT 3-2 clave motifs first appear in New Orleans music, R&B, ect? By overt clave motifs, I mean "The Bo Diddly Beat", "shave-and-a-haircut /two-bits", "hand-jive", ect. The song "Bo Diddly" was recorded in 1955.
-David