Bo Diddley Updates His Sound...

Trying to figure out the number of acts that guitarist and singer Bo Diddley influenced would probably take the better part of one’s life. Tracking down the endless covers of his music spread around on low run singles from the ‘60s would take up a tremendous portion of that time and probably eventually prove incomplete. Diddley’s sway over rock and roll, in its subject matter, tone and every other aspect of the music, can’t ever be overstated.

There would be no Rolling Stones to speak of – the group’s first hit was a Diddley cover of "Not Fade Away" – or at least the group would have wound up being dramatically different. But what Diddley, his beat and playing did for subsequent acts was to ratchet up the rhythmic element to a nascent rock and roll. That beat should rightly be perceived as an extension of John Lee Hooker’s Detroit based boogies, but Diddley added an element or two that rendered his work exotic in a time of blues players sounding pretty similar. Of course, after his initial clutch of work, there wasn’t too much notable and new stuff being released out of the Diddley camp after the mid ‘60s.

By the time that the Brit Invasion hit, Diddley was its hero – Hooker, Chuck Berry and Jimmy Reed factored in as well. But he’d already become an antiquated figure. As white appropriation turned R&B and blues into rock and eventually psych, Diddley did his best to keep up. His guitar playing never fell behind and seeing as he worked out rock solos that would become a part of the genre, it’s not surprising that he never lost a step. But there were a few early ‘70s attempts at updating his sound that weren’t necessarily the greatest releases from his catalog.

It’s pretty difficult to hunt down a copy of the 1970 Black Gladiator, but it’s been heralded as forward thinking. Who knows, though? A bit easier to locate is the following year’s Another Dimension, which can’t be thought of as a harbinger of new things. Instead the album is greatly comprised of covers and an ill conceived track that comments on the Earth’s state of decay similar to some of the Beach Boy’s missives on dirty water from roughly the same period. So, “Pollution” and all of its seven minutes might not be worth taking a listen to, but neither is the Diddley’s version of Creedence’s “Bad Moon Rising.” Those backing vocals cap off a pretty abysmal performance even as the guitar playing is up to par.

There’s no shame in Diddley’s attempt to make Another Dimension something new while working to make use of his older work. Hopefully, if anyone can track down the album’s predecessor, the funk it supposedly holds could make up for this dredge here. Oddly enough, though, the various and sundry transgressions amassed over the album’s nine tracks didn’t hurt Diddley’s career. Maybe focusing on the disc’s closer, the instrumental “Go For Broke,” can make it all seem worthwhile, but probably not.