Consumer Guide Album

Bo Diddley: Where It All Began [Chess, 1972]
How bad can a Bo Diddley record be? A lot worse than this. It might have horns, or feature his versions of the latest hits, only Bo and his producers (Pete Welding and Johnny Otis) know better than that. On the other hand, how good can a Bo Diddley record be? Unlike Chuck Berry, who must also transcend a certain musical homogeneity, Bo hasn't written a whole songbook of great lyrics, and anyway, his homogeneity is a lot more homogeneous than Chuck's. C+