Review: Bo Diddley - Have Guitar Will Travel (1960)
Tracks: 1) She’s Alright; 2) Cops And Robbers; 3) Run Diddley Daddy; 4) Mumblin’ Guitar; 5) I Need You Baby; 6) Say Man, Back Again; 7) Nursery Rhyme; 8) I Love You So; 9) Spanish Guitar; 10) Dancing Girl; 11) Come On Baby.
REVIEW
Bo Diddley opened up the Sixties with his first LP that could be more or less justifiedly called an «original album» rather than a «compilation»: two of the songs were taken from his most recent single, seven were recorded specifically for the LP, and only two more were pulled out of the archival pile: somehow, ‘Cops And Robbers’ from late 1956 and ‘Mona’, the original B-side to ‘Hey! Bo Diddley’ from 1957 (retitled here as ‘I Need You Baby’) had previously avoided the 12-inch treatment, so they were recalled out of retirement to pad out the empty space on the record (which, even with both of them, is still barely half an hour long).
Unfortunately, in terms of easily recognizable «golden oldies» the record lags far behind Bo’s two LPs from the Fifties, and even behind quite a few of the succeeding releases. ‘Mona’ is probably the one with which most people are familiar, largely due to the Stones’ cover on their own debut LP — its special secret is that it combines the standard danceable Bo Diddley beat with an element of soulful romanticism, being more of a serenade than a braggadocio, and consequently, is guaranteed to work on cool chicks rather than cool cats for a change. The "Hey, Mona! – woah, Mona!" refrain has a sort of strange magic that makes it more memorable than almost any other such incantation in Bo’s catalog — maybe it’s just the element of nagging insistence, so natural to the heart of every hormone-driven teenager and so sublimely captured in this ritualistic chorus. Not to mention how well the line "listen to my heart go bumpity-bump" agrees with the rhythm of the song.
‘Cops And Robbers’, for some reason, also attracted the attention of at least some of the trans-Atlantic rockers, having been covered by the Downliners Sect and Wayne Fontana in the Sixties, and also played by the Stones (not released officially at the time, but regularly played live in the early days — you can have yourself a live version from the BBC sessions). However, it is more of a repetitive musical anecdote than a song, and feels like Bo needed to do something in the style of Chuck Berry — but couldn’t, so he borrowed a tune released by minor songwriter Kent Harris, who originally cut it with his backing band as «Boogaloo And His Gallant Crew» in September 1956 (curious coincidence: one of the chorus lines goes "don’t try no monkey business", and Chuck’s ‘Too Much Monkey Business’ also came out in September 1956!). The problem is, neither the Kent Harris original nor the Bo Diddley cover are particularly exciting on a musical level (at least the Harris version has some nice piano playing for it), and not tremendously funny on a lyrical level; overall, Bo Diddley’s (or, more accurately, Kent Harris’) sense of humor has nothing on Chuck’s, so this is a battle Bo was bound to lose.
As for the newer material, well... rather tellingly, the album was organized around a single whose A-side was a full-on rehash of ‘Say Man’ called ‘Say Man, Back Again’ — if you loved those friendly jokes and insults the first time around, here’s a second dose for you! ("Where you from?" – "South America!" – "You don’t look like no South American to me!" – "I’m still from South America!" – "What part?" – "South Texas!" – har har har!) — and whose B-side was a long, energetic, aggressive groove (‘She’s Alright’) that shows Bo had been paying serious attention to the success of the Isley Brothers. Give the band plenty of credit for being able to blow the roof off the house — but, perhaps, keep that «Originator» tag in the back drawer for the moment. (Fun fact: the original single version of ‘She’s Alright’ was relatively short and featured a minimum of backing vocals, but the LP version was extended and embellished with multiple vocal overdubs to create more of a party atmosphere — not sure if it helps).
Still, as a whole, the new material is not completely worthless or hopeless. Two of the tracks are instrumental, and both are fairly inspired: ‘Mumblin’ Guitar’ is built around the gimmick of Bo «muffling» his sound by running his axe through some weird sonic devices (not sure of the technical details) so as to make it «talk», and ‘Spanish Guitar’, also true to its title, has the man trying to integrate some flamenco chords into the usual Diddley beat, with interesting, if somewhat puzzling, results. Perhaps the chief virtue of both tracks is that they show the man still willing to experiment — in pure enjoyment terms, the gimmick of ‘Mumblin’ Guitar’ becomes predictably tiring after the first minute, whereas the combination of Andalusian romanticism with African tribal rituals... well, it might work for somebody on a gut level, but I don’t really feel as if it were the most organic mix in the world. But it’s always good to expand one’s horizons, that’s for sure.
Of the new vocal numbers, ‘Dancing Girl’ may attract special attention due to the lead guitar work — I don’t know if it’s Bo himself or his trusty sidekick, Peggy «Lady Bo» Jones (for some reason, I just hope it might be the lady), but while the song itself is just a variation on ‘Diddley Daddy’, those intense breaks between verses are... intense. Remember Dylan’s ‘Maggie’s Farm’ and how Mike Bloomfield’s hystrionic mini-breaks between each verse add so much to the song’s aggression level? That can certainly be traced back to the likes of ‘Dancing Girl’, where each of the half-sung, half-spoken tense-as-hell verses is «signed off» with an equally tense, sharp-ringing guitar flourish. ‘I Love You So’ and ‘Come On Baby’ are less aggressive and more party-friendly, but both also feature some juicy-thick distorted guitar work, especially the latter with its almost metallic riff running throughout the song, hilariously contrasting with the jolly minimalistic lyrics.
Still, there is no need to pretend that Have Guitar Will Travel turns over some new leaf in the musical history of Bo Diddley. With the coming of the Sixties, «The Originator» more or less morphed into «The Adaptator», keeping, perhaps, a sharper ear to the ground than many, if not most, of his Fifties’ peers but using these new fads and influences to refuel his already existing formula rather than come up with any new ones. And since the early Sixties were not particularly hot on progressive new fads and influences, it is no surprise that there was relatively little fuel around to keep that formula as fresh, hot, and nutritious as it was just a couple of years ago. From here on, Bo’s LPs — particularly now that he was actually recording them as LPs, which required more material and, consequently, more filler material — would become patchy and disappointing, though never disappointing to the point of needing to be ignored. The man did learn how to cope with the «Fifties’ Curse» a bit better than everybody else, but to be altogether immune to it would require a miracle, and for that, Bo Diddley found himself ineligible.
Only Solitaire Reviews: Bo Diddley