Legendary Bluesman Bo Diddley Released from Hospital After Heart Attack

Bo Diddley, 78-year-old legendary bluesman, has left a Gainesville, Fla., hospital where he had been recuperating after suffering a heart attack.

The heart attack came last week, just about three months after suffering a stroke. He was hospitalized in Nebraska in May after suffering a stroke after casino performances in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and later transferred to the hospital in Gainesville, which is Archer, where he lives.

"With his health greatly improved," said Susan Clary, Diddley's publicist, "Diddley is happy to be home with his family and away from the hospital food." He was released Saturday, Sept. 1, and the announcement of his release came on Tuesday, Sept. 4.
Diddley is known as "The Originator" because he was instrumental in the evolution of blues into rock-and-roll.

He developed the "Diddley beat," - a hard driving pattern (bomp-bomp-bomp bomp-bomp) that was picked up by other artists, including Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away" (later covered by the Rolling Stones), and Johnny Otis's "Willie and the Hand Jive."

His best known hits include "Who Do You Love," "Before You Accuse Me," and "I'm a Man," and "Hey, Bo Diddley." He plays a distinctive rectangular-shaped Gretsch guitar nicknamed the "Twang Machine."

He was born Ellas Otha Bates December 30, 1928, in Macomb, Mississippi, and, after more than 50 years of performing, is one of a very few original Delta bluesmen surviving. He later changed his name to Ellas O.B. McDaniel after his adoptive mother, Gussie McDaniel, who was his mother's cousin.

His nickname is something of a mystery, even to him. Various sources indicate it came from different sources. The most likely source: very early crude guitars fashioned out of a single string of baling wire tacked to the sides of a building, often a barn, propped with a bottle, and plucked or strummed with a knife, were known as diddley bows.

Diddley was 7 when his family moved to Chicago, where he took violin lessons. Soon after, his sister gave him a guitar.