Joseph Tortelli, Goldmine magazine. Date: February 15, 2008:

Bo Diddley
I’m A Man: The Chess Masters, 1955-1958
Hip-O Select (B0009231-02)
Grade: *****

Long before “self-branding” became a business school buzzword, Ellas McDaniel developed the ultimate personal brand: Bo Diddley. Bo Diddley is his professional name, “Bo Diddley” is the title of his first record, and the “Bo Diddley beat” is the popular term for the rhythmic juggernaut energizing his music. Reinforcing the brand, he recorded “Diddley Daddy,” “Run Diddley Daddy,” “Hey! Bo Diddley” and even “Bo Meets The Monster,” a 1958 novelty single.

All are included in I’m A Man: The Chess Masters, 1955-1958, a limited-edition two-CD set encompassing 48 tracks from his earliest years recording for Chess Records’ Checker imprint. Twenty-six songs were issued during the late 1950s on such groundbreaking singles as “Mona,” “Diddy Wah Diddy,” “Who Do You Love” and “Before You Accuse Me,” an uptempo blues popularized by Creedence Clearwater Revival on Cosmo’s Factory in 1970. Lacking the commercial crossover success of many contemporaries, Diddley scored only one Top 40 pop hit, the jiving “Say Man,” which spotlights the guitarist trading streetwise insults with percussionist Jerome Green.

Along with a half-dozen LP cuts, the collection has eight alternate takes first issued on CDs and box sets and, most significantly, eight previously unreleased tracks. Two takes of “Bo Diddley” are unveiled beside the original R&B chart-topper; the three versions come from a two-day session in March 1955 that produced “I’m A Man”/”Bo Diddley,” the most influential double-sided single in rock ‘n’ roll history.

The ballad “Our Love Will Never Go” reveals a gentler vocal and songwriting style. A 1956 demo of “Love Is Strange” finds Diddley debuting a tune whose songwriting is attributed to his wife Ethel Smith. Whether he had a hand in the composition remains a matter of speculation, but the song was polished by Mickey and Sylvia, who pinned a catchy guitar riff to their familiar 1957 duet.

An important addition to 1950s music, I’m A Man: The Chess Masters lays out Diddley’s initial recordings chronologically and supplies detailed session credits. More than a half-century later, Bo Diddley describes a rock ’n’ roll founder and his potent, durable, innovative brand of music. www.hip-oselect.com

— Joseph Tortelli

Rich Kienzle, No Depression magazine:

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BO DIDDLEY
I'm A Man: The Chess Masters 1955-1958
(Hip-O Select)


(NODEPRESSION.NET) -- If Chuck Berry molded his music from his love of jazz, country, pop and blues, Bo Diddley, who moved from McComb, Mississippi, to Chicago in 1934, retained a gutbucket earthiness blending overtones of the rawest Delta blues with sounds of the primitive Chicago street bands he played with as a kid. Half a century after his debut single, "I'm A Man"/"Bo Diddley", and decades after Buddy Holly, the Rolling Stones, George Thorogood and others built on his foundations, it's worth examining Bo's first four years in greater depth.

This limited-edition two-CD package assembles 48 tracks, encompassing released and unreleased masters, twelve alternate takes, and eight unissued masters, one an edgy rendition of Mickey & Sylvia's 1958 hit "Love Is Strange".

Bo's primal nature embraced the conventional blues structure of "I'm A Man" and drove his trademark sound, manifested on "Bo Diddley"; the song's "hambone" rhythm and raw, tremolo-drenched guitar defined him. Such raw, relentlessness begat "Mona", "Bring It To Jerome", "Say Man", "Diddy Wah Diddy", the tongue-in-cheek voodoo of "Who Do You Love" and the fiery "Down Home Special".

The alternate takes, combined with dramatically improved remastering, allow the listener to hear the creative process unfold as Bo and the band work out ideas. It's easy to hear how editing created certain released masters, thanks to the inclusion of both edited and unedited masters, along with Chris Morris's concise notes and George White's discographical data.

Last November, McComb honored Bo (a.k.a. Ellas McDaniel) with a plaque on the Mississippi Blues Trail, noting his influence and citing him as, to use a hackneyed but correct cliche, "a founder of rock and roll." Still recovering from the crippling stroke suffered in May, he attended the ceremony and sang a bit. That indefatigable spirit comes through on this extraordinary collection, which easily merits a sequel.

-- RICH KIENZLE

Copyright c. 2008 No Depression Inc. and/or Rich Kienzle