Diddley was sent to Chicago as a child and adopted by his mother's sister.
"A story with some funny lyrics, or some serious lyrics, or some love-type lyrics, " Diddley said.
Barge says that long before Diddley worked audiences, he worked odd jobs and construction.
But Diddley told the public radio show American Routes that he found it someplace else.
"Bo Diddley means that a guy was something extra-special or a real pistol, " Barge says.
He took his own advice: Many of Bo Diddley's most famous songs were about Bo Diddley.
But Diddley said that while rhythm was important, the secret to good songwriting lay in something else.
Regardless of the beat's source, music historian Peter Guralnick says that Diddley made it big enough for everyone.
Check out this song, which borrows the melody of early rock classics by Bo Diddley and the Dixie Cups.
When he joined the Roosters at age 17, even Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley seemed "poppy" to them, he said.
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Some of Diddley's guitars were custom-built to his specifications by the Gretsch company: shaped like stars or covered in fur.
Diddley's music drew from the sounds of the Chicago streets where he first performed, and his name came from street-corner slang.
"I was trying to play 'I Got Spurs That Jingle Jangle Jingle' by Gene Autrey, and stumbled upon that beat, " Diddley said.
"I wrote a concerto that I wrote on the guitar, " Diddley said.
Diddley became bitter over how others had profited from his sound.
Bo Diddley was born Ellas Bates in Mississippi and grew up in Chicago, where he played guitar on street corners before being discovered by Chess Records.
Following the deaths of Bo Diddley and Les Paul this summer and last, it's obvious that we still greatly misunderstand the music of their particular edge, on which Eckstine was a fellow traveler.
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