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BD: Ain’t enough people saying the right things. They’re hiding too much.

SG: What was the payola scandal about?

BD: Payola was a form of paying-off. This was the beginning of my decline. My records started getting played less and less when the payola trip came up. I never knew anything about if anybody was getting paid to play Bo Diddley records. This never dawned on me as far as the disc jockey. The DJ held the public, he had the key to the public. It looked like it was really what was happening. I never knew it as an artist. I knew we had this moral thing about the lyrics. Lyrics couldn’t be too strong. That was the only thing I knew about as far as things that were going out to the public in that area of the record business. When people were listening and buying Bo Diddley records I thought it was the job of the record company to make the record. I’m just showing you exactly what I thought and I’m pretty sure a lot of other entertainers thought the same way. I have never said this before! You are the first guy I’m saying this to, in this way. I thought it was the job of the record company to record me as an artist, or anybody else, and give it to the radio stations. The radio station play it for the public. The public in turn show whether they like it by buying it. But! When a good record went into a radio station and didn’t get played and was a potential two or three million seller, or a good record, you got some guy sitting there saying :”Well hey, I’m not going to play the record unless you lay a couple of C notes on me.” But the artist don’t know anything about this. Then when somebody blew the lid off of the whole scene cat’s like me, and other artists I know about. Records started getting played less and less because the DJ’s at the time had no particular liking for Bo Diddley. They just played the record because probably somebody walked in and said “Hey man, here’s a box of candy play my new releases.’, But he had a record company, like probably Chess Records went in and said “I’ll get Bo Diddley to come by and do a record hop if you play his new record. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” This is the way it was. Later I found this out.

SG: So your record company executive was doing this behind your back?

BD: But he wasn’t doing me any harm. He was getting his product played by saying “OK I’ll send your wife a box of candy.” Now I don’t know if it was candy or not. He might have sent the dude some bread for all I know. But I don’t know this. Then all of a sudden the radio stations started freaking out and saying things like, I’m quoting from what I heard from some DJ’s who are no longer DJ’s because of the payola system “I was accused of taking money and giving none of it to the radio station and we’re not allowed to accept presents from anybody.” I said “If you play my record and I come by and say, hey man I brought you a shirt and tie with your initials on it, that’s my business if I give it to you. You played my record.” And the DJ says “Well wait a minute you can’t do that.” Whether people know it or not back in the sixties it became a type of dictatorship and you have almost the same thing now. Because if a program director don’t like Bo Diddley my record will never get played on that station and I don’t think that’s right. It’s not for him to say as long as the music is in the Rock and Roll vein. If I’m one of those artists I should be given a chance if there’s time.

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