The Lowly Monochord Zither
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| Diddley Bow (image swiped from scholastic.com) |
In its simplest form, a Diddley Bow is simply a length of broom wire or cotton baling wire strung between two nails -- various authorities will say "on the side of a house" or "on a porch post" -- with a bottle or can positioned to serve as a resonator and bridge. It's "fretted" (a kind of lame term, since a proper Diddley Bow has no frets) with a piece of metal or a bottleneck, and plucked or picked or even tapped drum-like with a stick.
Semantically, "diddley" means "nothing," as in "diddley squat." A string between two anchors is a bow. You can't shoot a deer with a wire strung between two nails on the side of a house, but you can annoy everyone in the house with it, "Diddley Bow" is an appropriate handle for a monochord zither.
Lonnie Pitchford, a blues musician and instrument maker from Lexington, Mississippi, demonstrated Diddley Bows by making them on one of the vertical porch posts of his house. At the request of his family, his tombstone was designed as a playable Diddley Bow.
[As an aside, the link to Lonnie Pitchford's tombstone will take you to the Mount Zion Memorial Fund website. This project, directed by T. DeWayne Moore at the University of Mississippi, helps keep the blues alive by providing headstones for musicians who otherwise would be planted in unmarked and forgotten graves and by leveraging resources to "inspire" counties and municipalities to better maintain (mostly) African-American cemeteries. You should consider a donation.]
Now, the side of a house or a porch rail isn't terrifically portable, and seeing as how the traditional Diddley Bow performer was an adolescent male, parents might fatigue rather quickly after a few hundred performances of "Rolling and Tumbling" being hammered out on the side of the house. So the typical conformation for a Diddley Bow today is a board, a can or bottle (or getting fancy, a cigar box), two nails, and the aforementioned wire.
Jack White of the White Stripes -- who appeared as an itinerant draft-dodging picker in the movie Cold Mountain -- has a cool YouTube showing the quick construction of a portable (and electrified) Diddley Bow. It's fun and might inspire you to make your own. [Obligatory COVID-19 home schooling plug: A Diddley Bow is a dandy little home science project for demonstrating sound waves and pitch to kids!]
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| Bo Diddley (Who Do You Love?) |
Now, none of this should be confused with Ellas McDaniel (aka Ellas Otha Bates, aka Bo Diddley), who was a classic rock'n'roll performer. Although McDaniel's stage name appears to be derived from the jitterbug and he did like to play oddball guitars, there's no real evidence that he learned his basic music theory from one. Truth is, his family relocated from Mississippi to Chicago when he was only six years old, and he learned trombone and violin in a church orchestra.
It appears that he got the stage name from other performers who were using it. It's a cute pun that would have been recognizable to African-American audiences relocated from the Deep South to Chicago. And even better (again semantically), "Bo" is a street slang modifier that amplifies the meaning of the next word. So our friends at the infallible Wikipedia interpret Mr. McDaniel's stage name as meaning absolutely nothing.
Luther Dickinson of the North Mississippi Allstars -- coincidentally one of my favorite bands of all time -- plays a three string electrified tin can "guitar." It is not a Diddly Bow, although it owes a lot of its appeal to the same primitive appearance. Regardless, Luther's a great guy and a talented performer, so I'm gonna throw in a YouTube of him playing his tin can guitar. Be amazed!
