Customer Reviews:
 An amazing album July 28, 2008
Matthew Smith (TN USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is just a really good collection assembled here. There's always those purists who think one song shouldn't have made it on a greatest hits type album and that another should have gotten its place, but the fact is that this is a really good album.
As someone who has only recently started listening to the Blues, I was surprised when I first introduced myself to Bo Diddley because I knew so many of his songs but just not sung by him. I was amazed to find out how much influence this man had on my own musical experience without my ever even hearing about him until very recently. I was happy to remedy that situation with a great album such as this one. This is the type of CD you can put in and just listen over and over again. The only reason to touch the dial after you put this CD in is to turn it back to re-listen to one of your favorites.
From the rough and fast Who Do You Love to jocular Say Man this album has great songs. We recently lost this musical giant but with this recording and many like it he will live on forever.
I Said -Who Do You Love? June 23, 2008
Alfred Johnson (boston, ma)
The last time I had occasion to mention the late Bo Diddley in this space was in connection with a series of interviews and performances along with Chuck Berry, Little Richard and others in Keith Richards Chuck Berry tribute film Hail, Hail Rock and Roll. The talk centered, rightly, on the dismal fate of many black recording artists who developed what would become Rock and Roll when the white artists like Elvis took it over and reaped the benefits of a mass audience. Well, those interviews occurred a while ago, back in the 1980's, but Bo's sense of not having been properly recognized I believe remained until his death. Yet, when one thinks of the sounds created by the founders of Rock and Roll can anyone deny that Bo's primal beat was not central to that explosion? I think not.
Here, in one album we have, if not all of Bo's creative work then a good part of it, at least a good place to start. Of course, the classic song Bo Diddley and its offshoots and variations are here. However, the one Diddley song that will probably outlive them all though is Who Do You Love. Although not a theme song it nevertheless expresses the raw energy of rhythm and blues/ rock/ carib sound like not other. Hell, George Throughgood was able to make a whole career on the basis of having covered that song and other Bo work (and to be fair, covering the work of Elmore James and Hound Dog Taylor as well).
And that is a good point to finish on. The really great rockers, and Bo is in that company, unlike the one-shot johnnies get covered because their work expresses something that someone else later wishes to high heaven that they had created. (George has been quoted directly on that point.) Finally, I give the same warning here as others have given in their comments about the sameness of this CD and the Chess 50th Anniversary CD from 1997. Get one or the other and save those pennies to get more of Bo's work. "I said- I'm just 22 and I don't mind dying. Who do you love?" Thanks for that line Bo. Kudos
Great CD February 18, 2008
Alan (USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Really enjoyed this CD of pioneer Bo Diddley. Showcases many of his hits. Also shows that he was very spontaneous with his playing and arrangements. "Roadrunner" is a little known gem that I really enjoyed.
This Is...His Best. September 20, 2007
Steven Swan (Illinois)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Yeah, I see what they did with the repackaging that has been mentioned already. I was lucky enough to get the former version of this album for about 3 dollars through an "overstock sale" at a music club recently, glad I got it then!
Good collection here, I have to give it 5 stars; Bo is such an influential artist of course. Almost seems to deserve more on the "reissue", but for a casual fan of Bo and the history of Rock and Roll, this is a must have, if you like what you hear here, then perhaps graduate to the Chess box set too!?
He and Chuck Berry are essential to any Rock And Roll collection, in what form you choose to catalog them is up to you I guess. Either a box set or a nice collection like this, at least you get a good feel either way of such a wonderful almost forgotten today artist.
 Bo Deserves Better May 21, 2007
J P Ryan (Waltham, Massachusetts United States)
20 out of 20 found this review helpful
Yes, every one of the 20 tracks on this set is excellent, and many are seminal classics. But as my esteemed colleague with the "unhelpful" votes writes, this is 1997's Chess comp in new clothes, song for song, and not newly remastered either. Bo Diddley's March 1955 Chess debut, 'Bo Diddley' b/w 'I'm A Man' represented Bo with a fully developed style and persona, one side redefining children's nursery rhymes against an masterfully arranged and recorded track that is pure rhythm long before J.B.'s mid-sixties funk bombs. Emphasizing tom-toms, Jerome Green's sizzling maracas, and the primal jangle of Bo's guitar, it was backed by a blues classic that inspired Muddy Waters' 'Mannish Boy'. This is surely one of the most influential singles ever, and followups such as the irresistable 'You Don't Love Me' and 'Pretty Thing' are just as explosive, original, and uncompromised. Bo's influence on second generation rock 'n' rollers such as The Rolling Stones, Yardbirds, Animals, and (obviously) Pretty Things insured his work would shape popular music for decades to come. And on their classic 1973 debut New York Dolls included just one cover, Mr. Diddley's 'Pills'. All these great recordings and more are included on this collection. Yet, unforgiveably, very little of Bo Diddley's great body of work - his fat years cover roughly 1955 to '66 - remains in print in his own country. By all means snap this up if you are a neophyte looking to buy your first Bo collection, for the music is utterly undated, even thrilling. However, clocking in at under an hour, the set remains merely acceptable (the remastering is very good), certainly not generous. For fans there is nothing here we don't already have. The notes are nothing special, which reminds me that it's time for the 1989 "Chess Box" to get the sonic upgrade - and, while we're at it, expanded treatment - the first generation's most innovative rock 'n' roller deserves. That set, despite sonic limitations due to the problems endemic to early digital, contains unissued rarities, seldom heard gems, and classics. But it is most revelatory for Robert Palmer's brilliant in depth essay analyzing and celebrating Bo's work, an essential read that remains the most intelligent piece I've seen about the music (the box also contains a biographical piece). And expand that box to three discs! Bo issued a string of fine albums during his 'golden decade', plus some terrific single sides and unissued material (some is collected on the superb and - naturally out of print - "Rare & Well Done"). The man is 78 as I write this, recent victim of a stroke, yet the 50th anniversary of his classic debut went virtually unnoticed, as did his 75th birthday. Sonic innovator, grunge craw-dad, rap progenitor, rhythm king, the man deserves at least some of the accolades, sensitive reissue campaigns, and serious critical attention Ellington, Armstrong, Elvis, Sinatra, and others received on such occasions.
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