 | Who Do You Love?Bo Diddley |
Writer(s): Ellas McDaniel (see lyrics here) Released: July 7, 1956 Peak: 3 DF (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 2.17 video, -- streaming |
Awards:Click on award for more details. 
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About the Song:While he didn’t achieve the success of many of his peers, “Bo Diddley stands among the most influential early rock ‘n’ roll performers.” TB He signed to Checker Records in 1955 after abandoning a boxing career. His style was defined “by insistent tremolo-laden guitar licks not entirely dissimilar to those of Chuck Berry.” TB “The heavily-tremeloed guitar…allowed him to play two different rhythms simultaneously.” SS “Who Do You Love?” is marked “by its shuffling drum pattern” TB and “the most primitive beat in rock history.” DM There was also “the call-and-response of the title’s question and the instrumental answer” TB and the brilliant pun (“hoodoo you love”). DM Finally, there were his “bizarre images of sexual sorcery” DM which included “some of Diddley’s strongest and most surreal lyrics [about] taking in cobra snake neckties and a chimney ‘made out of human skull.’” TB The song was also inspired by a folk game among blacks in the late 1800s in which they tried to “verbally goad and outdo one another, often in profane fashion.” SS The practice emerged in blues songs in the late 1920s. “Intrigued with the rhymes and melody they were using, Bo Diddley would use them as a the foundation of his greatest song.” SS “Who Do You Love?” “profoundly influenced a generation of rockers.” SS Artists including the Band, the Doors, Bob Seger, George Thorogood, and the Yardbirds covered the song in subsequent years. “If Diddley was never again able to produce a record of comparable power, he was in good company; neither has anybody else.” SS Resources:
First posted 3/25/2023. |
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