Say_Man

Say Man

Say Man

1959 single by Bo Diddley


"Say Man" is a song by American musician Bo Diddley. Written under his real name of Ellas McDaniel, it was recorded by Bo Diddley in 1958 and released as a single in 1959 on Checker 931.

Quick Facts Single by Bo Diddley, B-side ...

The recording became his biggest US pop hit, reaching number 20 on the Hot 100,[1] and number three on the R&B chart.[2] It arose from a jam session between Diddley and his maracas player Jerome Green, and featured Diddley and Green trading insults in the style of the word game known as The Dozens.[3]

Bo Diddley said of the song: "A lot of the things I did in the Chess studios, we were just goofin' around ... They played it back, and it shocked all of us! Of course, they cut out all the dirty parts."[4] Music critic Maury Dean, while rejecting the idea that the track is "the first rap song", says that it is "the first major soul tune to feature a total spoken patter of pal put-downs to a rockin' beat ... . Bo's lightning right hand chops chords like sugar cane. The incessant beat throbs into the hot American evening nocturne of streetwise savvy. Rap – with a side of ghetto-blast humor."[5]

The recording also appeared on the album Go Bo Diddley.[3]


References

  1. Whitburn, Joel (2003). Top Pop Singles 1955-2002 (1st ed.). Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin: Record Research Inc. p. 193. ISBN 0-89820-155-1.

Share this article:

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Say_Man, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.