Born in McComb, Mississippi, Ellas Otha Bates, he was adopted and raised by his mother's cousin, Gussie McDaniel, he considers family name, becoming Ellas McDaniel. In 1934, the family McDaniel offers a largely black South Side of Chicago, where the young man fell Otha Ellas McDaniel and the name known, until his musical ambitions required him to take an identity more catchy. In Chicago, he was an active member of his local Church Ebenezer Baptist, where he studied trombone and violin, enough to become proficient in a second for the music director to invite him to join the orchestra, with which he led until the age of 18. He was most impressed, however, through music, he heard the beating of a local church, Pentecostal, and interest in the guitar.
Inspired by a concert where he saw John Lee Hooker perform, he said his work as a carpenter and mechanic arts career to the street at the corner of a street with friends, including Jerome Green (c. 1934 - 1973), in a band called the Hipsters (later the Langley Avenue Jive Cats). During the summer of 1943-1944, he played for tips on Maxwell Street Market in a band with Earl Hooker. In 1951, he played on the road with the support of Roosevelt Jackson (bass sink) and Jody Williams (where he learned to play guitar). Williams later played guitar on "Who Do You Love?"(1956). [10] In 1951, he landed a regular at Club 708 in the South Side of Chicago, with a repertoire influenced by Louis Jordan, John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters.
In 1954 he teamed up with harmonica player Billy Boy Arnold, drummer Clifton James and bass player Roosevelt Jackson, and the demo was recorded "My Man" A "and" Bo Diddley ". They re-recorded the songs at Chess Studios with the support assembly consisting of Otis Spann (piano), Lester Davenport (harmonica), Frank Kirkland (drums) and Jerome Green (maracas). The album was released in March 1955, and the A-side, "Bo Diddley", became a hit R & B #.
McDaniel adopted the stage name "Bo Diddley". The origin of this name is unclear, because several different stories and claims there. Bo Diddley himself said that the singer's first name familiarly with her adoptive mother, while the harmonica player Billy Boy Arnold said in an interview that originally the name of an actor Leonard Chess was borrowed for the title the song and artist name to Bo Diddley's first single. A "Diddley Bow" is a stringed instrument of African origin are usually made in America, probably developed from the unit on the west coast of Africa.
