It ain’t no town, and it ain’t no city.
It was a place, though, at least in the imaginations of southern African-Americans in the early 20th century–as real as East Jabip was in my white Jewish neighborhood in Philadelphia, or the lovely burg of Bumfuck to my South Jersey friends.
But while our far-flung imaginary locales were typically backwater towns in the middle of nowhere, Diddy Wah Diddy was a utopia in which its residents wanted for nothing.
So when Bo Diddley wrote and recorded a song about his unattainably amorous love interest, he set it in the perfect place.
Bo Diddley’s 1956 single didn’t become the smash hit it should have, but it inspired a raft of covers over the years, including dueling 1966 covers (a bluesy rock version by West Coast-based Captain Beefheart and a garage rock version from East Coast-based The Remains) that collided and kept each other from becoming national hits.
Despite never becoming a big hit, “Diddy Wah Diddy” remained a favorite cover candidate for rock bands nationwide, including Joe Grushecky and The Houserockers.
Bruce started making frequent on-stage appearances with Joe and The Houserockers in the mid-nineties American Babylon era, and “Diddy Wah Diddy” was a fun and frequent cover in their set lists. And given the two rockers’ East Coast upbringing, it’s not surprising that their version owed a lot to The Remains.
But Bruce’s definitive “Diddy Wah Diddy” performances came in a pair of show-opening crowd-pleasers at the first-ever concerts (by anyone) at Fenway Park, in September 2003.
The second of those two shows was filmed for posterity, and while it remains unreleased, Bruce released a brief glimpse of it in the form of an official tour thank-you video for “Diddy Wah Diddy.”
To this day, it remains one of my all-time favorite official Springsteen videos. If you can’t help but smile when singing “Diddy Wah Diddy,” just try to stay stoic when you watch Bruce and the band mug their way through Bo Diddley’s classic.
It was an inspired choice–for fans anxious for release in that freshly post-9/11 era, an E Street Band show felt like a three-hour visit to Diddy Wah Diddy, something Bruce acknowledged when he changed the words “she lives way down” to “she lives right here in Diddy Wah Diddy.”
Here’s hoping we all get to make a return visit soon.
Diddy Wah Diddy
First performed: August 20, 1994 (Long Branch, NJ)
Last performed: September 7, 2003 (Boston, MA)
