SOME RESPECT, FINALLY, FOR FATHER OF HAMBONE

When Bo Diddley was inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in January, he didn’t just feel honored.

He felt vindicated.

“I was first with the whole darn thing, but I never got the recognition I was due,” he said angrily. “It kind of hurt, because after me, everybody began copying my rhythms and doing my songs, and I never got any credit.”

More than 30 years ago, the spasmodic guitar playing and syncopated “hambone” beat of his 1955 recording debut, “Bo Diddley,” became one of the musical cornerstones of rock ‘n’ roll.

Diddley had previously played in rhythm-and-blues nightclubs on Chicago’s South Side while training to be a Golden Gloves boxer at a local gym.

Through-out the late 1950s and early ‘60s, Diddley (his real name is Ellas Bates McDaniel; a bo diddley is an African one-string guitar) continued to achieve minor chart success with songs like “I’m a Man,” ’Who Do You Love” and “Mona.”

Elvis Presley was among those who regularly came to see him at the old Apollo Theater in Harlem. In 1962, Diddley performed a private show at the White House at the personal invitation of President John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline.

But outside of a single Top 40 hit--”Say Man,” in 1959--Diddley’s repeated attempts to break out of rock’s minor leagues proved fruitless. Instead, he spent most of his career in relative obscurity.

He cut records with the likes of Muddy Waters and Little Walter and, for a time in the 1970s, even gave up music entirely to serve as sheriff of Los Lunas, N.M.

All the while, other, mostly white rock artists were capturing the spotlight with their own versions of Diddley originals.

Among them were the Yardbirds (“I’m a Man”), the Rolling Stones (“Not Fade Away”), and, more recently, George Thorogood (“Who Do You Love”).

As recently as a few years ago, Diddley said, he read a review about an Aerosmith concert in which the writer referred to “I’m a Man,” one of the heavy metal band’s most popular live numbers, as “the old Yardbirds song.”

“That’s not the Yardbirds, that’s the Yardbirds copying my tune,” he said. “I was the original artist; I wrote and recorded that song back in the 1950s, and it marked the beginning of rock ‘n’ roll, period.

“So why should they be recognized--and not me?”

At long last, however, Diddley’s many frustrating years as the forgotten father of rock ‘n’ roll appear to be behind him.

Aside from his induction into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, Diddley, now 58, has toured incessantly throughout Europe and the United States; his current West Coast tour includes an appearance Thursday at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach.

He has recently appeared on several nationally syndicated television shows, including “Late Night with David Letterman” and “The Late Show with Joan Rivers.”

He was a special guest on two TV specials: “Fabian’s Good Time Rock ‘n’ Roll Show” and “Dick Clark’s 33rd Anniversary of American Bandstand.”

He has performed at the Live-Aid Concert in Philadelphia, the Chicago Blues Festival and the Lubbock Music Festival, held in September in Lubbock, Texas, and billed as “Buddy Holly’s 50th Birthday Party.”

At the Belly Up, he will share the stage with the Bonedaddys, a “world beat” group from Los Angeles whose upcoming debut album includes a Diddley tribute called “Say Bo (Where’d You Get that Kpolongo?)”

“He’s always been a hero of ours, and last February, when he was playing in Los Angeles, we went to his show and asked him to come by the studio and listen to the song,” said Michael Tempo, the Bonedaddys’ percussionist and founder.

“We weren’t sure how he’d like it, since it pokes a little fun at him and brings up the fact that his (hambone) beat actually originated in Africa a thousand years ago.

“He kept a straight face until halfway through; then he broke into a smile and said, ‘Get my guitar.’ We ended up rerecording the entire song, with Bo singing and playing alongside us right there in the studio.”

A few months later, Diddley went back to the recording studio--this time, with his own band--to record his first album of new material since 1974’s “Big Bad Bo.”

“I want the kids to hear authentic rock ‘n’ roll instead of this junk they hear on the radio,” Diddley said. “The kids go by what they hear, and all they hear are a bunch of screaming guitars.

“That puts me in a difficult position. I was playing in a club a few weeks ago and some guy about 20 walks up to me and starts hollering, ‘Play some rock ‘n’ roll.’

“He wasn’t talking about rock ‘n’ roll; he was talking about what he hears on the radio, about what some deejay says is rock ‘n’ roll. It’s not, though, and I wish they (radio stations) would stop doing that to the kids.

“There ain’t no new rock ‘n’ roll; the only authentic rock ‘n’ roll is the stuff I’ve been playing all my life.”