Review: 'Bo Diddley' (Chess/Acoustic Sounds Edition)

He didn't have Chuck's knack for storytelling, Buddy's melodic gifts, Elvis's voice, or Little's sheer excitement, but Bo is still probably my favorite Rock and Roll pioneer. His rhythm defined his work—the "shave-and-a-haircut" groove will always be known as "the Bo Diddley beat"—but the artist formerly known as Ellias McDaniel also deserves credit for his spacey atmosphere. He's really the only major early rocker who prognosticated psychedelia, which is my personal fave genre. He was also damn funny.

Those who mostly think of Bo Diddley as the guy who endlessly recycled the Bo Diddley beat will find the man's actually body of work startling. Along with his expected Afro-Cuban funk jams, and his hypnotic pre-psyc reveries, Bo Diddley mastered straight blues, soul balladry, proto-garage rock, doo-wop, surf instrumentals, and a couple of hilarious records on which he did the dozens with his righthand man, Jerome Green. 

Those who want an almost unadulterated wallop of Bo Diddley doing his Bo Diddley beat, however, will revel in his first album. Like a Ramones record, Bo Diddley actually doesn't offer a ton of variety, but it is never boring, always enthralling, and witty through and through. And if it plays like a greatest hits album, that's because every single one of its tracks was also released on a single, which is pretty typical for a fifties Rock and Roll LP. As far as those things go, and with all due respect to Here's Little Richard and After School Session, Bo Diddley is probably my favorite. 

So I was thrilled to see that it was going to get reissued as part of Chess Records' Acoustic Sounds campaign. According to the press release, the records released in this campaign are "remastered from the original analog tapes and pressed on 180-gram vinyl at Quality Record Pressings."

The best I could do for comparison purposes was my 1984 copy of His Greatest Sides: Volume One, an all-analog, true-mono, excellent-sounding compilation with a track list very similar to that of the album I'm reviewing here. The best I was expecting from the new Bo Diddley was that it might sound identical to His Greatest Sides. What I heard was more detail, a deeper soundstage, punchier bass, more volume, and an overall more natural sound. The new disc sounds phenomenal, though you will need to use a mono cartridge or mono switch while playing it to get the smoothest sound. The vinyl is flat, quiet, and well-centered, and with its sturdy, glossy tip-on gatefold sleeve, this could be the best presentation of the best album of the fifties there will be.