Word: rocks
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Apportioning credit for the invention of rock 'n' roll among Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and a few other pioneers has always been a challenge. Suffice it to say that Bo Diddley, who died at 79 in his home in Archer, Fla., never thought he got enough--and he was right...
...When Chess Records showed an interest, a harmonica player supposedly suggested the stage name Bo Diddley, slang for a bowlegged fool. A few days later, Diddley made his first professional recording, Bo Diddley; it rocketed to No. 1 on the Billboard R&B chart and introduced the world to rock's defining rhythm, the Bo Diddley "hambone" beat--bum-bum-bum, bum bum--that's fueled everything from Buddy Holly's Not Fade Away to U2's Desire to the White Stripes' Screwdriver...
Diddley also gave birth to a rock-'n'-roll persona--the baaaad man. "I walk 47 miles of barbed wire. I use a cobra snake for a necktie," he sang on Who Do You Love. Even though Diddley could sound tough, he was funnier than his peers and more progressive too, employing a series of female musicians at a time when rock was predominantly male. Despite his influence on the Rolling Stones and the Clash, Diddley was rarely credited as one of rock 'n' roll's creators--or paid like one--a fact, he admitted, that made him bitter...
...been more than a century since any major producer shipped oil in an actual barrel, but the unit has been the industry's standard since the mid-1800s, when overwhelmed Pennsylvania oilmen collected the substance in whiskey barrels after striking their first gushers. Before U.S. drilling began in 1859, "rock oil" (to differentiate it from vegetable oil or animal fat) was sopped up with rags, wrung out and peddled as a cure for everything from headaches to deafness. Spurred by demand for lamp fuel as whale blubber grew scarce, derricks popped up all over Pennsylvania's oil region...
...audience responded with light applause, and Amy B. Diaz ’08 and Class Marshal Joshua C. H. Sharp ’08 presented the Fed chair with a gift of rock glasses for his home or office. Sharp cautioned against on-the-job use, saying, “We’re counting...