TS: Chuck Berry's "Maybelline" vs. Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love"

He also wears a cobra-snake for a necktie.

I like the version of "Who Do You Love?" with Muddy Waters. What are good albums by these guys?

I was pooing the photo error.

What are good albums by these guys?

I tend to not think about this era in album terms, but then again, I never investigated either...

But Chuck Berry was caught with video cameras in the ladies bathroom of his restaurant, so he's a perv.

TS--Nerds vs Pervs

I'm a Berry fan, though. "You Never Can Tell" and "The Promised Land" and "Talking About You" are great. "Tulane." Chuck for lyrics, Bo for groove, but Chuck grooves too...

"if i get to heaven/before you do/i'll try to make a hole/and pull you through." a plea of undying devotion on one hand, a murder threat on the other hand. i've always loved that.

and it's balanced by the previous verse's "i once had a heart/so trill and true/but now it's gone, from me to you/take care of it, like i have done/for you have two hearts, and i have none," in which HER undying devotion is also expressed as, essentially, an act of murder.

damn i love that song.

I have a great Alan Freed aircheck where he plays the then-new "Bo Diddley," and gleefully observes that "this guy *calls* himself Bo Diddley."

Chuck for namechecking Norfolk, my hometown, in the first line of "Promised Land." And the solo in "School Day." And another obscurity, "I Want to Be Your Driver."

you know of course that Alan Freed scammed a songwriting credit on "Maybelline" in general I much prefer Berry but "Who Do You Love" rules between the riddims and the lyrics. "I wear a cobra snake for a necktie" inspired Alice Cooper. Bo was a proto-punk!

"who do you love" is a stone classic.

a tried and true -- classic, in fact -- method of writing great pop songs!

??? I've always thought that, sonically, "Maybelline" and "Thirty Days" were Chuck's VERY best. He never sounds tinny to me, but those two records are so overdriven as to seem constantly on the verge of exploding. And that solo in "Thirty Days"!! I usually love these games but am having an impossible time choosing between "Maybelline" and "Who Do You Love".

(But on the other hand, I'd argue that "Maybelline" is the better prsonal achievement, since unlike Chuck, Bo didn't play his own guitar solo - I believe that was Pat Hare.)

-- Amateur(ist) (amateuris...), June 11th, 2005.'

Where you getting your information? According to Bo Diddley (in the book 'Bo Diddley: Living Legend') the song was invented thusly:

Muddy Waters was on this "He's go a black cat bone" thing at the time, an' so I was tryin' to come up with somethin' -uh- rougher. You know, people ten to hang around whatever might be goin' on that seem to be the "click", an' if you don't know any better, you'll find yourself writin' stuff that's similar.
I had the line "I walk forty-seven miles of barbed wire", but I couldn't get a rhyme for it. I thought of car tires, an' mule trains, an' couldn't get anythin' to fit. One day I said: "Use a cobra snake", and my drummer, Clifton James, added: "for a necktie". We then did a verse a day, him an me an' Jerome.

as far as head-to-head competition goes . . . guh. probably Chuck but Bo's Chess Box is (even) better, so it's hard to say. love the hell out of 'em both.

It seems to me that "Maybellene" is known as Chuck's signature song but I don't know if it's anybody's real favorite. If it had been, say, "Nadine" or "Brown Eyed Handsome Man" or "Come On" that had been put up, it would have been a fairer match.

"who do you love" is better.

after "Memphis," it's my favorite, and anyway Chuck's signature song is "Johnny B. Goode"

-- k/l

Uh, actually I DID already mention the ice-wagon, Ken!

"Memphis," if my memory is correct, was recorded in an office.
-- Rickey Wright

Your memory is indeed correct. And Chuck in fact played all the instruments himself, which explains the extremely rudimentary drumming.

Matos, I thought "Johnny B Goode" was Johnnie Johnson's signature song!

Connecting Ida Red to Maybelline without mentioning Rocket 88 inbetween seems odd...

So on this particular matchup, Bo wins, because almost every line of "Who Do You Love?" is bizarre, creepy, and memorable on first listen, to the point where I think the only one NOT yet cited on this thread is "Night was dark and the sky was blue" (or is it "but" the sky was blue?)...

Neither of these guys has another song with quite as fried-out of a sound or lyrics that come anywhere close to "Who Do You Love?"'s, although that's no slight to either of them. Probably the only song Chuck has that doesn't let up the genius for a single solitary line is "Nadine," which unfortunately is more downtempo and doesn't make much sense for a TS. (Chuck wins that one, though, and almost any other matchup with Bo that doesn't include "Who Do You Love?")

Upthread, under my Diddleyitis pseudonym, I wrote something about Bo, Clifton James, and Jerome Green writing the lyrics for "Who Do You Love?" God bless you Clifton, and God bless you Bo.

Because I heard Maybelline at lunch, and it revived my intense passion for it...then I thought that maybe 'Who Do You Love' edges it out by an inch due to it's oblique lyrics and off-kilter structure.

Thoughts?

― PappaWheelie (PappaWheelie), Friday, June 10, 2005 1:23 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark

I mean, Who Do You Love, by a country mile.