I'm A Man : The Chess Masters (US)

When a musician has a beat named after them, there's no doubt that they have their own signature -- a calling card that is recognized as their own even when others play it. It's rare that a musician gets credited with something so unique, but such an honor can also be a mild curse, as it implies that's all there is to their music. Bo Diddley, the man who patented a propulsive variation of the shave-and-a-haircut beat so instantly identifiable as one of the main strands of rock & roll's DNA, suffers a bit from that curse. Not that anybody denies that Bo is one of the architects of rock & roll, but the omnipresence of the "Bo Diddley" beat can lead some listeners to dismiss him as a one-trick pony. Also, the sheer primal urgency of his rhythms and his no-nonsense persona could be overshadowed by the flamboyance of Little Richard or Jerry Lee Lewis, or the quick-fire verbal skills of Chuck Berry. Diddley has had moments of resurgent popularity, his songs have been covered by generations of rockers; bands play his music without realizing their debt, but he's never quite had his work undergo a critical reappraisal, one that would let more than the diehards know how rich and varied his work is. With any luck, Hip-O Select's new double-disc set I'm a Man: The Chess Masters, 1955-1958 will help usher in that long overdue reappraisal. "I'm a Man" chronicles the first four years of Bo's career, when he was cutting singles instead of albums, just like almost all other rockers in the late '50s. Such emphasis on singles gave sessions a purpose: there was no room for filler, nothing recorded with the intent of padding out an album, so they were often concentrated and intense, as Bo's were. This covers sessions recorded between March 2, 1955 and December 1958, proceeding in chronological order so the alternate takes pile up quickly and there are a lot them -- roughly twelve, some of them unreleased, some of them previously appearing on various compilations over the years, including the excellent Rare & Well Done. Sometimes, alternate takes differ only minimally from the master, but that's not the case with Diddley's early Checker/Chess recordings. Here, there are some startling differences, notable almost immediately with the two previously unreleased alternates of his calling card, "Bo Diddley." Both are almost brutal in their rhythms, which is where the real difference on these takes lie: over the course of three takes, it's possible to hear the "Bo Diddley" develop, as the rhythm becomes lighter and danceable, more rock & roll and less blues. The rest of that first session is hard blues, highlighted by "I'm a Man" which turned into nearly as big an anthem as "Bo Diddley." Bo never backed away from the blues after that session -- his rock & roll always had an earthy, gritty grounding in the blues -- but in the wake of the success of "Bo Diddley," he started opening up his music almost immediately, with his second session producing the A-side "Diddley Daddy," a much lighter rock & roll tune where the presence of Little Walter on harp is mediated by the Moonglows' cheerful harmonies, a bit of a surprise considering the down-n-dirty precedent of "Bo Diddley," "I'm a Man," "Little Girl," and "You Don't Love Me (You Don't Care)." As the next few years rolled on, Bo was often full of surprises like that, turning out some of the hardest, toughest, early rock & roll singles, but he could also be light on his feet, boisterously, bawdily funny and sometimes just flat-out strange, as on the murky, ominous "The Great Grandfather" and the sawing violin of "The Clock Strikes Twelve." Much of this is evident on the best Bo hits comps, but it comes into sharper relief on I'm a Man because of the context. Hearing Diddley's music develop -- and rather rapidly, for that matter -- illustrates his depth and range and provides no small share of revelations, either. Chief among these, of course, is the first release of Diddley's original ver to be continued...