Editing Bo Diddley (section)

===Origins of stage name===
The origin of the stage name Bo Diddley is unclear. McDaniel said his peers gave him the name, which he suspected was an insult.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc19748/m1/ |title=Show 3 – The Tribal Drum: The Rise of Rhythm and Blues. [Part 1&#93; : UNT Digital Library |access-date=April 28, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190402115233/https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc19748/m1/ |archive-date=April 2, 2019 |url-status=live }}</ref> ''Diddly'' is a truncation of ''diddly squat'', which means "absolutely nothing".<ref>{{cite book |last = Spears |first = Richard A. |title = McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions |publisher = McGraw-Hill |edition = 4th |year = 2005 |page = 425 |isbn = 978-0-07-146107-8 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1 = Lighter |first1 = J. E. |last2 = O'Connor |first2 = J. |last3 = Ball |first3 = J. |title = Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang |publisher = Random House |volume = 1 (A–G) |year = 1994 |isbn = 978-0-394-54427-4 |url = https://archive.org/details/randomhousehisto01ligh }}</ref> Diddley also said that the name first belonged to a singer his adoptive mother knew. Harmonicist [[Billy Boy Arnold]] said that it was a local comedian's name, which [[Leonard Chess]] adopted as McDaniel's stage name and the title of his first single.<ref name="ArnoldField2021">{{cite book |last1=Arnold |first1=Billy Boy |last2=Field |first2=Kim |title=The Blues Dream of Billy Boy Arnold |date=2021 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-80920-5 |pages=121–123 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vqs_EAAAQBAJ&pg=PA121 |language=en}}</ref> McDaniel also stated that his school classmates in Chicago gave him the nickname, which he started using when sparring and boxing in the neighborhood with The Little Neighborhood Golden Gloves Bunch.<ref>{{cite interview |subject=Bo Diddley |interviewer=Arlene R. Weiss |title=Bo Diddley interview: "I'm the son-of-a-bitch that did it" |url=http://guitarinternational.com/2011/08/29/bo-diddley-interview-i’m-the-son-of-a-bitch-that-did-it/ |date=May 2001 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110916174706/http://guitarinternational.com/2011/08/29/bo-diddley-interview-i%E2%80%99m-the-son-of-a-bitch-that-did-it/ |archive-date=September 16, 2011 |access-date=October 19, 2019 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.celebrityrockstarguitars.com/rock/diddley_bo.htm |title=Ed Roman on Bo' Diddley RIP |author=Ed Roman |year=2005 |work=Celebrity Rock Star Guitars |access-date=May 2, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120504040119/http://celebrityrockstarguitars.com/rock/diddley_bo.htm |archive-date=May 4, 2012 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

In the 1921 story "Black Death", by [[Zora Neale Hurston]], Beau Diddely was a womanizer who impregnates a young woman, disavows responsibility, and meets his undoing by the powers of the local [[hoodoo (spirituality)|hoodoo]] man. Hurston submitted it in a contest run by the academic journal ''[[Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life|Opportunity]]'' in 1925, where it won an honorable mention, but it was never published during her lifetime.<ref name="Storm2016">{{cite web |author1=Anna Storm |title=Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Zora Neale Hurston, and the Creation of "Authentic Voices" in the Black Women's Literary Tradition |url=https://dc.uwm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2424&context=etd |access-date=August 11, 2020 |date=2016 |archive-date=November 7, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191107020332/https://dc.uwm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2424&context=etd |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="Hurston020">{{cite news |author1=Zora Neal Hurston |title=Black Death |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/14/books/review/hitting-a-straight-lick-with-a-crooked-stick-by-zora-neale-hurston-an-excerpt.html |access-date=August 11, 2020 |work=The New York Times |date=January 14, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200114101052/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/14/books/review/hitting-a-straight-lick-with-a-crooked-stick-by-zora-neale-hurston-an-excerpt.html |archive-date=January 14, 2020}}</ref>

A [[diddley bow]] is a homemade single-string instrument that survived in the American [[Deep South]],<ref name="Kubic2009">{{cite book |last1=Kubik |first1=Gerhard |title=Africa and the Blues |year=2009 |publisher=Univ. Press of Mississippi |isbn=978-1-60473-728-8 |page=16 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YfCzP-SB8d4C&pg=PA16 |language=en}}</ref> especially in Mississippi. Played mainly by children,<ref name="Evans1970">{{cite journal |last1=Evans |first1=David |title=Afro-American One-Stringed Instruments |journal=Western Folklore |date=1970 |volume=29 |issue=4 |doi=10.2307/1499045 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1499045 |issn=0043-373X |pages=242–243 |jstor=1499045 |quote=The drum patterns, then, have been transferred to the guitar with  the one-stringed instrument as the medium of exchange. Thus the one-stringed instrument functions  virtually the same way in Liberia and Mississippi. It is mainly a children's instrument on which rhythms and patterns (signals) are learned for later use on the adult instruments, the drum and guitar... The reason the blues of  Mississippi guitarists should be so especially percussive doubtless  lies in the fact that drums and their functional equivalent, the  "diddley bow," are still played in that state.}}</ref> the diddley bow in its simplest form was made by nailing a length of broom wire to the side of a house, using a rock placed under the string as a movable bridge, and played in the style of a bottleneck guitar, with various objects used as a slider.<ref name="Palmer2011">{{cite book |last1=Palmer |first1=Robert |title=Blues & Chaos: The Music Writing of Robert Palmer |year=2011 |publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=978-1-4165-9975-3 |pages=114–115 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hx0ZdtoJzc8C&pg=PA114 |language=en}}</ref> The apparent consensus among scholars is that the diddley bow is derived from the monochord zithers of central Africa.<ref name="Komara2006">{{cite book |last1=Komara |first1=Edward M. |title=Encyclopedia of the Blues |year=2006 |publisher=Psychology Press |isbn=978-0-415-92699-7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-w-uGwm_LhcC&pg=PA268 |pages=267–268 |language=en}}</ref>