BO DIDDLEY: BO DIDDLEY IS A LOVER (1961)
1) Not Guilty; 2) Hong Kong
Mississippi; 3) You're Looking Good; 4) Bo's Vacation; 5) Congo; 6) Bo's Blues;
7) Bo Diddley Is A Lover; 8) Aztec; 9) Back Home; 10) Bo Diddley Is Loose; 11)
Love Is A Secret; 12) Quick Draw.
This one finds Bo slipping further and further
into «comic» mood — with no fewer than four
songs directly referring to him in their title, and no fewer than just about
everything else being a veiled or unveiled account of Bo Diddley's adventures,
either, with jokes, gags, puns, and musical slapstick all over the place. Not
surprisingly, the more this man talks about himself, the less he somehow seems
to be able to say. And no matter how irresistible the LP title might have been
for the ladies — at least those well-versed in the art of mirror-reading — this
was the first of Bo's LPs not to yield even one single radio classic or fan
favorite.
But this does not necessarily mean that the
record is a complete failure. First, there are some top notch instrumentals. On
ʽCongoʼ, Bo recycles the string-scratching trick of ʽRoadrunnerʼ, this time
imitating a jet plane engine rather than a Harley Davidson, then engages in
some playful surf soloing à la Duane
Eddy, all the while strutting his stuff and shaking his shimmy in classic Bo
fashion. And on ʽAztecʼ, he leads the listener into Spanish territory — again,
not really trying to emulate any of the masters of Latin art (which would have
been an obvious embarrassment), but rather with the purpose of doing a little
bit of deconstruction, randomly swapping the predictably simplified chords with
squeaks, squirts, scratches, and rumbles. This is not «parody» — just good old
Bo trying to place his personal mark on yet another style.
Elsewhere, it looks like all he is doing is
recycling, re-recycling, and re-re-recycling ideas that have already been in
heavy use for about five years. But repeated listens show that, even at this
time, each song has just a little bit of individuality, that one little «shift»
in texture that prevents it from completely repeating its predecessors. It
might be a slight change in the beat, one extra note in the riff, one
transposed chord, some prominently placed backup vocals from the man's loyal
female staff... something, and it all rocks fairly hard (which is also a
plus, considering the general softening of US «mainstream» rock'n'roll
standards in the early 1960s — besides, Bo was the only one of the major black
rockers left at that time, with Little Richard going to church and Chuck Berry
going to jail).
For instance, ʽNot Guiltyʼ is a
nursery-rhyme-style dialog between Bo and his backups, with a Chuck
Berry-influenced lead guitar part, suitable for a steady 4/4 beat, set against
the syncopated Bo Diddley beat — a good example of Bo's «sonic illusion»
technique where your ear is slightly thrown off course by the dissonance.
Another Chuckified number is ʽBo Diddley Is Looseʼ, where the lead guitar
carries on a sharp, but merry dialog with Bo in the vein of ʽCarolʼ and ʽLittle
Queenieʼ: the licks may be borrowed, but the party atmosphere is all Bo anyway.
And ʽYou're Looking Goodʼ is among his most convincing speedy R'n'B numbers —
for once, the wobbly guitar patterns and the Isley Brothers attitude are
combined to fine effect.
Open missteps and blunders are arguably limited
to the generic 12-bar ʽBo's Bluesʼ, which does sound like an unintended parody
— controversial as that might sound, Bo has less feeling for the slow 12-bar
form than Mick Jagger, and is unable to do anything interesting for it; and to
the happy R'n'B ballad ʽLove Is A Secretʼ, which, on top of it all, is rendered
physically unlistenable by the never-ending backup crooning (three minutes of
high-pitched ooh-wee-oohs that only pause to catch a breath from time to time
is straightahead torture for the ears — forget waterboarding, this is the real deal).
Everything else ranges from «curiously nice» to
«pleasantly mediocre»: a clear-cut step down from the weirdness / fun level of Gunslinger, but the man is still
willing to combine brains, brawn, soul, and ego to good effect — the main
problem is that, this time around, there has been just a little too much ego
thrown in the pot, overshadowing the rest of the ingredients. Still, a modest thumbs up
here for one of the few «real rock'n'roll» albums of 1961.
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