From a good Kurt Loder
Rolling Stone interview:
"Bo Diddley" went Top Five on the R&B charts and got you onto Ed Sullivan's TV show "” where I gather Sullivan wanted you to sing "Sixteen Tons," a big Tennessee Ernie Ford hit that you were performing onstage at the time, and you refused.
Ed Sullivan did everything in his power to shut Bo Diddley down, because he claimed that I double-crossed him on that song. What happened was, they had my name written on a piece of paper; my name is Bo Diddley, and I had a song called "Bo Diddley." He heard me singin' "Sixteen Tons" and wanted me to sing it on the show. So I thought I was supposed to do two tunes. I went out there and sang "Bo Diddley" first "” that's what I was
there for, y'understand? "” and he got mad. He says to me, "You're the first colored boy ever double-crossed me on a song," or a show, or somethin' like this. And I started to hit the dude, because I was a young hoodlum out of Chicago, and I thought "colored boy" was an insult. My manager at the time grabbed me and said, "That's Mr.Sullivan." I said, "Who is that?" I didn't know who the hell he was, man. Shoot.
When I did the Ed Sullivan show, they gave me a check for 750 bucks. CBS cat say, "You gotta sign it, but you gotta give me the check back. This is a formality." I says, "Uh... Formality "” who's that?" He says, "We get you on the show, but you gotta kick the check back." I said, "What kind of crap is this?" I done signed my name to that sucker, you understand? Who was gonna pay taxes on that? But all right, I gave him the check back. Then a few years later I picked up a book and read where they paid Elvis Presley, for his first appearances on Ed Sullivan, $50,000 "” and I got sick.
That told me what was happenin' "” what rock & roll really was, and rhythm & blues. Rhythm & blues was for me "” "ripoff & bullshit." It was to keep me from gettin'
my hands on any money, and anybody else that looked like Bo Diddley "” meanin' black cats. Elvis himself didn't have anything to do with this "” he was only takin' whatever he could get comin' up. But, see, the people that was dealin' in this was much older. And they'd say, "We're gonna take
him to the back, but we're going to take
him to the front," you understand? We were dealin' with this type of thing. So rock & roll was for the Caucasians, and R&B was for the black cats. And I was black, so I got hung up in the R&B, which.... the money wasn't the same. If you're R&B, you don't make the big money. If you're rock & roll, you make all the money, or your price is a lot different, one way or another. It was basically all the same music, but if you could get a white boy to record it, certain stations would play it. "We'd break it if you get a white boy to do it" "” some radio-station people told record companies this.
