Bo Diddley Ride On / The Chess Masters, Volume 3, 1960 - 1961 CD

One of the great things about Bo Diddley, something that often goes unmentioned, is that he was a home-recording pioneer, building his own studio years before any other rocker. The full fruits of this labor can be heard on RIDE ON: THE CHESS MASTERS VOL. 3, 1960-1961, Hip-O Select's third installment in their complete Bo Chess/Checker masters and easily the weirdest set yet. All 54 songs here were recorded over the course of 13 months: a whopping 17 them have never been released (an additional seven have never seen release in the U.S.), every one of them was cut in his home studio in Washington DC, and not a one reached the charts. That lack of commercial success should in no way be seen as an indication that the music on RIDE ON is subpar--odd and messy, yes, but the music here is fueled by a mad genius that could only have flourished in a hothouse setting like a personal home studio. Much of this music was heard on the classic LPs BO DIDDLEY IS A GUNSLINGER and BO DIDDLEY IS A LOVER, but in many ways the way to hear it is on this wild, wooly complete compilation, where all the flights of fancy sit next to the big, booming rockers, and where the variety proves Bo to be the visionary he is.Record Collector (magazine) (p.81) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "Some of the demos, such as the wonderfully low-fi 'Aloha' and 'Funny Talk' are wild and raw, but capture the visceral energy and hypnotic appeal of Diddley's idiosyncratic guitar-led grooves."