Bo Diddley Is A Gunslinger

Bo Diddley saw a trend he could get behind with early TV’s embrace of Western heroes. Later to become a deputy sheriff himself (in Valencia County, New Mexico), the rock and roll architect posed in Tulsa with six-guns and guitar for the cover of *Bo Diddley is a Gunslinger* (1960). While not exactly a concept album, Bo’s fifth LP did bend the imagery to his own uses: “Gun Slinger” is a textbook Diddley-beat workout that imagines our man at the O.K. Corral, while “Cheyenne” celebrates the television hero. Those cuts blend well with the rest of the offbeat business at hand, which includes “Doing the Crawdaddy,” a non sequitur would-be dance-craze tune; a convincing take on “Sixteen Tons”; and the double entendre “Ride On Josephine.” This remaster contains five bonus tracks, key performances in their own right, amended to the original 10-cut set.