Bo Diddley Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation and a Grammy Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. He is also recognized for his technical innovations, including his distinctive rectangular guitar, with its unique booming, resonant, shimmering tones. Born in McComb, Mississippi, as Ellas Otha Bates, he was adopted and raised by his mother's cousin, Gussie McDaniel, whose surname he assumed. In 1934, the McDaniel family moved to the South Side of Chicago, where he dropped the Otha and became Ellas McDaniel. He was an active member of Chicago's Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he studied the
British rhythm and blues British R&B bands. He also brought over American folk and blues performers who found they were much better known and paid in Europe than America, a series of tours that began with Josh White and Big Bill Broonzy in 1951, and would include Brownie McGhee, Sonny Terry, Memphis Slim, Muddy Waters and Lonnie Johnson. Lonnie Johnson played at the Royal Festival Hall in 1952 on a bill opened by a group led by the young Lonnie Donegan. Donegan became the key figure in the development of the British skiffle "craze", beginning in Ken Colyer's Jazzmen by playing American folk and