{"id":457,"date":"2011-03-01T05:55:19","date_gmt":"2011-03-01T10:55:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=457"},"modified":"2025-10-20T11:01:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T15:01:12","slug":"album-review-bo-diddleys-beach-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2011\/03\/01\/album-review-bo-diddleys-beach-party\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Bo Diddley\u2019s Beach Party"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/musoscribe.com\/images\/bo_diddley_beach_party.jpg\" width=\"280\" height=\"280\" align=\"right\" hspace=\"10\" vspace=\"10\" \/>In 2011 it takes some doing to imagine a concert such as this. Here\u2019s the scene: July 1963, Myrtle Beach South Carolina. The state known then for segregation, secession and <strong>Strom Thurmond<\/strong> (and these days for boorish U.S. Rep. <strong>Joe \u201cYou Lie!\u201d <\/strong><strong>Wilson<\/strong>) hosted a beach concert by none other than Mr. <strong>Ellas Otha Bates<\/strong>, better known as <strong>Bo Diddley<\/strong>. No, really.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">The show was recorded, and has gone down in history as one of the best live recorded shows of its era. Long out of print, UMe has scheduled the re-release of this historic album on March 8 2011.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">The show blows by quickly; ten tracks at a shade over thirty-seven minutes. And the CD reissue doesn\u2019t add any bonus tracks. But as best as I can tell, <em>Bo Diddley\u2019s Beach Party<\/em> has never been released in any digital form until now. As a slice of music history, it\u2019s essential listening. But as it happens, the show is a barnburner, making it more than mere history.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">The sound quality is quite good, and the song selection is pretty clever. Bo mixes the set up between instrumentals (\u201cOld Smokey,\u201d which is a rocking instro version of exactly the campfire chestnut you\u2019re thinking of right now) and vocal-led numbers like his (non-charting) 1960 single \u201cGunslinger.\u201d While most of the songs are indeed built around the \u201cBo beat\u201d (a.k.a. rhumba, a.k.a. shave-and-a-haircut-two-bits, a.k.a. hambone), there\u2019s actually a fair and surprising amount of variety within that framework.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Even though the set includes no less than three rewrites of that beat (\u201cHey! Bo Diddle,\u201d \u201cBo Diddley\u2019s Dog,\u201d and \u201cBo\u2019s Waltz\u201d) the device never wears out its welcome. Modern rock fans will spot Diddley\u2019s influence on <strong>Cheap Trick<\/strong>\u2019s <strong>Rick Nielsen<\/strong> when they hear Bo\u2019s version of \u201cRoadrunner.\u201d There weren\u2019t a lot of electric guitarists grinding their picks up and down the fretboard in summer \u201963.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><em>Bo Diddley\u2019s Beach Party<\/em> is a case of truth in advertising: it\u2019s most definitely a party record. And while the man\u2019s recorded career got underway in 1955, he continued rocking late into his mid-seventies; I had the pleasure of seeing him onstage in 2003, and while he performed the entire show seated in a chair at the front edge of the stage, he had the crowd on its feet the entire time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">So transport yourself back to one of the rockingest examples of pre-<strong>Beatle<\/strong>mania concerts in the unlikeliest of places, and give <em>Bo Diddley\u2019s Beach Party<\/em> a spin. It\u2019s great; no lie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2011 it takes some doing to imagine a concert such as this. Here\u2019s the scene: July 1963, Myrtle Beach South Carolina. The state known then for segregation, secession and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","cat-65-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30206,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457\/revisions\/30206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}