On November 20, 1955, he appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, a popular television variety, where he upset the hosts. "I am two songs and he is mad," Bo Diddley later recalled. "Ed Sullivan said that I was a colored boy, the first double-cross him. He said that I would not last six months. "This event has requested that she sing the Merle Travis wrote Tennessee Ernie Ford hit" Sixteen Tons ", but when he appeared on stage, he sang" Bo Diddley " instead. This substitution resulted banned him more appearances.
The request is that people hear Diddley relaxed Sullivan singing "Sixteen Tons" in the locker room. Diddley account of events was inconsistent.
Diddley Chess including the recording of "Sixteen Tons" on the album is gunslinger Bo Diddley, which was originally published in 1960.
He continued to have hits throughout the remaining years of the 1950s and even 1960s, including "Pretty Thing" (1956), "Say Man" (1959), and "you can not judge by the cover Books" (1962 ). He has published a series of albums whose titles, including Bo Diddley and Gunslinger is having Guitar, Will Travel, which has sustained the legend himself created. Between 1958 and 1963, Checker Records released 11 albums long duration by Bo Diddley. Although pierces like a crossover artist with white audiences (appears on Alan Freed concerts, for example), it rarely compositions adapted to the problems of adolescence.
In 1963, he played in British tour with the Everly Brothers and Little Richard. The Rolling Stones, still barely known outside London at the time, appears as an act of support on the same bill.
In addition to many songs recorded by him in 1956, he co-wrote with Jody Williams, the pioneering pop song "Love Is Strange", a hit forMickey & Sylvia in 1957.
Bo Diddley is one of the first American male musicians to include women in his group, including "The Duchess" Norma-Jean Wofford, Peggy Jones (aka Lady Bo ") Cornelia Redmond (aka Cookie), and Debby Hastings, who led his group over the last 25 years of his career to do. He also established one of the studio recording their first home.