Bo Diddley Birthplace — McComb, Mississippi

Bo Diddley — Ellas Otha Bates, later Ellas McDaniel — was born on December 30, 1928, in McComb, Mississippi, and moved to Chicago with his family as a child. His contribution to rock and roll is a rhythmic figure so distinctive it has its own name: the 'Bo Diddley beat,' a syncopated clave pattern derived from African and Afro-Cuban music that runs through 'Bo Diddley,' 'Who Do You Love,' 'Mona,' and dozens of other recordings. The beat was immediately absorbed into rock and roll — Buddy Holly used it for 'Not Fade Away,' and from there it travelled everywhere.

Bo Diddley's rectangular and other unusually shaped guitars were as recognisable as his rhythm, and his stage presence — big, loud, uncompromising — made him a natural rock and roll archetype. He signed to Chess Records in Chicago in 1955 and his early Chess singles are among the most energetic records ever made. Despite his foundational influence, he never achieved the commercial success of contemporaries like Chuck Berry, a fact that embittered him in later years.

McComb, in Pike County in southern Mississippi, has a Mississippi Blues Trail marker acknowledging Bo Diddley's birth. The city is better known as the birthplace of the civil rights movement in Mississippi — a series of voter registration drives in the early 1960s made McComb a flashpoint for violence and activism. Bo Diddley died in Archer, Florida, in 2008.