Bo Diddley was born Ellas Bates on Sunday December 30th 1928 on a small farm near the town of McComb, Mississippi, USA, in rural Pike County, close to the Louisiana border, the only child of Ethel Wilson and Eugene Bates. He had 3 half-brothers and a half-sister.

He was adopted by his mothers cousin, Mrs. Gussie McDaniel, along with his cousins Willis, Lucille and Freddie, and adopted the name Ellas McDaniel. In the mid-1930s the family moved to the south side of Chicago. Soon after, he began to take violin lessons from Professor O.W. Frederick at the Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church. He studied the violin for twelve years, composing 2 concertos for the instrument.

For Christmas in 1940, his sister Lucille bought him his first guitar, a cheap Harmony acoustic. It was at this time that he acquired the nickname Bo Diddley (...Bo Diddley is me; to tell ya the truth, I dont know what it (the name) really is...) from his fellow pupils at the Foster Vocational High School in Chicago.

The newly-named Bo Diddley had long been fascinated by the rhythms that he heard coming from the sanctified churches. A frustrated drummer, he tried to translate the sounds that he heard into his own style. Gradually he began to duplicate what he did with his violin bow by rapidly flicking his pick across his guitar strings. I play the guitar as if Im playing the drums....I play drum licks on the guitar. He continued to practice the guitar through his early teens.

Shortly before leaving school he formed his first group, a trio named The Hipsters, later known as The Langley Avenue Jive Cats, after the Chicago street where he lived. Upon graduation he pursued a variety of low paid occupations including truck driving, building site work and boxing, playing locally with his group to supplement his income. Around this time he married his first wife Louise Woolingham, but the marriage did not survive. A year later he married Ethel Tootsie Smith, a marriage that lasted just over a decade. In 1950 maracas player Jerome Green

BlackFacts Details

Black And White: ‘America’s Son’ speaks candidly about racism

Washington DC Facts

Barack Obama Facts

Women Facts