Bo Diddley Have Guitar Will Travel

Originally uploaded by david haggard

I recently heard part of “Bo Diddley” by Bo Diddley on an old air check tape from my college radio days. The sound – a wall of wavering psychadelic tremelo. There is a whole other world in that song. It is like space travel.

I love songs by artists about themselves [see "Big Country" and "The Ballad of John and Yoko" and "The Ballad of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars"]. For a long time I thought I liked this song by Diddley because he brags about himself, turns himself into a folk hero legend. But it is the SOUND that really sets it apart.