You Can Do The Boogaloo On The Weekend

Bo Diddley — "Back to School" (1966)

Sep 04, 2024

I was lucky. For all the moving around I did as a kid, I never wound up in a public elementary or junior high school that could be remotely considered “bad”. Sure, some were stronger than others in certain academic areas, and some were more about imposing discipline than fostering creativity or independent thought; but all of them were well-funded, offered their students plenty of extra-curricular activities, and had at least a few good teachers who inspired and encouraged me.

I was also very fortunate that, despite being from a middle class household (and not exactly being a straight-A student), I still had the opportunity to attend some really excellent private schools for high school and college, where my mind was opened to a lot of ideas and concepts that remain very much with me to this day.

But there was one lesson that none of these schools taught me, one which I had to learn for myself: Never pass up a cheaply-priced Bo Diddley single, even if you’ve never heard (or heard of) it before.

This lesson was first driven home to me back in 1985, when I went to Wax Trax in search of Bo Diddley’s “Pills” on 45. Though the legendary Chicago record store — a regular weekend stop during my high school years and after — was better known for carrying punk and new wave imports and rarities, they also had a fantastic oldies section in the back of the store, complete with a singles bin that was filled with what we now call “new old stock” 45s. I was in the initial flush of my New York Dolls obsession, and their blazing cover of Bo Diddley’s “Pills” was one of my favorite things on their first LP. I had never actually heard Bo Diddley’s original, but I figured it had to be even more of a raver than the Dolls’ version; and after not being able to find whichever Bo Diddley album had “Pills” on it (I would learn many years later that it had only appeared on the 1966 Bo compilation The Originator), I went trawling through the oldies bin at Wax Trax in hopes of finding the single.

As they so often did, the Wax Trax gods smiled upon me that day: a blue-label Checker reissue pressing of “Pills” b/w “Call Me” (originally released in 1961) awaited me in the Bo Diddley section, looking as clean as it must have done the day it shipped from the Chess warehouse in the late sixties. I immediately grabbed it — and in my excitement, I accidentally also grabbed the single behind it, not realizing my mistake until I got up to the front counter. The other single was Bo’s “Not Guilty” b/w “Aztec,” two songs I’d never heard before; but as it was only a couple of bucks, and I was feeling fairly flush at the time thanks to my gap-year clerical gig at Beatrice Foods, I took a chance and forked over the necessary cash for both records.

After getting the singles home, I was greatly disappointed by Bo’s “Pills” — the lyrics were great, but the music had a loping doo wop/calypso bop that did nothing for me. The Dolls had clearly done the right thing by setting the song on roller skates and nailing a lit Roman candle to its ass; to this day, I think it’s the far superior version. “Call Me,” on the other hand, was Bo in slinky blues mode, sounding very much like what The Rolling Stones would try to do just a few years later. I absolutely loved it.

But what I loved even more than “Call Me” was “Aztec,” the flip side of “Not Guilty”. The A-side was a particularly uninspired rehash of “Bo Diddley,” the original 1955 hit that Bo regularly returned to over the years; even listening to it today, I’m struck by just how bored Bo sounds as he’s laying down the vocals. But “Aztec,” man… what a track! A eerily brooding instrumental with a touch of Spanish grease, “Aztec” now sounds to me like a precursor of surf music and an older cousin of “Emotions” from Love’s first album; but at the time, I’d never heard anything like it, and I was totally entranced by the aural spell that this semi-accidental purchase cast over me.

As I would learn much later, “Aztec” was actually the uncredited work of Bo Diddley’s longtime rhythm guitarist Peggy Jones, aka Lady Bo, who wrote the song and played all the guitar parts. But the point was hammered home, nonetheless — pass up a Bo Diddley single at your own peril!

I was reminded of this lesson (and just how deeply I’d internalized it) this past weekend, when I was cleaning a stack of 45 rpm wax that I’d scored about two weeks earlier at Rocket Number Nine, my favorite record store in the Hudson Valley. It had been just long enough that I’d forgotten exactly which records I’d purchased, so I was pleasantly surprised to find an unfamiliar Bo Diddley single in the stack: “Ooh Baby” backed with “Back to School”. There were several other Bo singles in there as well — “Diddley Daddy,” “Diddy Wah Diddy” and “I’m a Man” among them — but those were all songs that I already knew by heart; these two tracks, however, were a total mystery to me, so I guess I must have instinctively grabbed the record as soon as I saw it.

Though the single was released in late 1966, it’s entirely possible that both sides — or even just their backing tracks — were recorded much earlier. Bo was pretty prolific in his recording, and it wasn’t unusual for various songs and tracks of his to sit in the vaults for a few years or more before finally seeing the light of day. “Ooh Baby” has a soulful dance groove to it which does sound pretty 1966-ish, while “Back to School” is a stomping rocker of the sort that he was regularly cutting a half-decade earlier, though both sides feature the same silvery, slithery lead guitar tone. (That said, Bo’s playing style was pretty damn timeless, so Bo circa ‘61 could easily be mistaken for Bo circa ‘66, and vice-versa.)

Both sides are great, but “Back to School” really stuck out for me, due to its high energy, Bo’s hilariously instructive asides (more on them in a second), and because this is the time of year when all the students and teachers who haven’t already started their fall term have to officially bid farewell to summer. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more raucous and enthusiastic celebration of going back to school than this one; even “School Is In” by Gary U.S. Bonds sounds pretty subdued by comparison.

It’s precisely the sort of song I could have used to forcibly disperse the clouds of melancholy and anxiety that were usually massing around my head at this time of year. Even though the only truly horrific September I ever experienced was in 1978, when I entered a Greased-up seventh grade in Ann Arbor, Michigan, it always made me kind of sad and tense to leave behind the free-form fun of summer and get back into the regimentation of the school week.

The only time that I was ever at all excited to start school again was right before my senior year of high school, both because my classmates and I were about to enjoy the unique experience of being the top cats at our school, and because I was really stoked to show off all the awesome vintage duds I’d scored in New York City over the summer. In fact, just about the first thing I did upon getting back to Chicago was to call up my best friend Jason and arrange a time for us to meet up at Wax Trax wearing our finest summer scores.

For the record, I was wearing a periwinkle blue linen sports coat with white linen slacks, a pink-and-purple striped button-down shirt and a narrow iridescent black silk tie; Jason was in a lime green double-breasted suit jacket with bright blue pinstripes, a white shirt, black tie, and black jeans that he’d tapered himself. (I forget what shoes we were wearing, but you can be damn sure that they were stylin’.) Of course, after we finished shopping, we made it all of two blocks from Wax Trap before some local mooks yelled “FAGS!!!” at us from a passing car.

Bo Diddley, on the other hand, surely would have approved of both our attention to personal presentation, as well as our positive attitude about starting school again. “Back to School” is filled with encouraging words about studying hard and making your mom and dad proud of you, as well as the importance of getting along with your schoolmates and greeting your teacher with a smile, and admonishments to not be a drop-out.

But my favorite parts of the song are where Bo goes off-script and shouts over his backing singers, “Put that transistor radio back in that trunk — you can do the boogaloo on the weekend!” He drops additional wisdom on the outro, yelling as the track fades that “If you wanna be boss, you’ve got to LEARN something… If you wanna be Top Cat, you’ve gotta be IN THE KNOW !”

Amen to all that, Bo.