Before You Accuse Me. Bo Diddly cover on ukulele
From the 1958 'Bo Diddly' album this song was written by Diddly himself (real name Ellas McDaniel) and has been covered by Creedence Clearwater Revival, at least twice by Eric Clapton and by Magic Slim. Bo Diddly's is the best, though!
Several people have asked me why I haven't done any blues songs and, although I love the blues and especially people like Howlin' Wolf and John Lee Hooker who are great influences, I would be the first to admit that I don't have a blues voice, and so I could not do their songs justice. I am envious and a little in awe of Youtube uke people like Lisa ( / lisaxy424 ), Todd ( / doogey9 ) and Robin ( / baronk69 ) for their ability to excel at this type of song and in such diverse fashions. I am always wary of jazz and blues because they sound so easy to do, but I know that making then sound simple is extremely difficult - and I only do simple! This one, though, IS quite simple and is more of a 12 bar blues disguised as a rock n roll song (possibly vice versa) than anything and I can usually pull off a bit of rock n roll without too many tears.
I did have quite a good ending worked out but I forgot what it was by the end of the song, so did a 12 bar instrumental to try and remember. It still didnt come so I started another chorus but still it wasnt there so the rubbish ending you have here is the best I could come up with on the fly. Why not do another take? I hear you say (damn those voices in my head!) well this was about take six and it was the first one that had gone right for so much of the song and I really wasnt confident of getting it again! My motto: If at first you dont succeed, try again a couple of times, by all means, but dont bloody kill yourself!!! OK, not very inspirational, I agree but its better than the shorter version: Aww,bollocks! Thatll have to do! (rough translation from the original Latin: Testiculari! Id Est Excrementum!)