Diddley Has No Regrets With BMI

Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Little Richard, a true triumvirate of rock ‘n’ roll royalty, will stride to a Beverly Hills stage Tuesday night for another in an endless number of awards in their careers. But this time it’s an “icon award” from BMI, the performance rights group that represents 300,000 U.S. songwriters, composers and publishers. BMI, in essence, collects license fees when a song is played on the radio, performed, used on a television show, etc., and then distributes the money to its members, who range from Leadbelly to Britney Spears.

BMI’s business may sound like a dry affair to outsiders, but to Diddley, for one, this award will be special because of the way BMI handles that business.

“The only people that ever did me right, in the 1950s and all the way up through now, is BMI,” the blues-minded guitar hero said. “I have no regrets in my 47 years with them; everything in the book was right.”

If he were the regretting kind (“I’m not,” he says), Diddley could certainly make a list. The artists and songwriters of his era, especially the African Americans among them, were routinely denied the pay-offs due their classic work.

“I was one of them,” he said. “I was dealt the wrong hand in the card game. I was brought up in a generation of trusting people, and we found out that there are few people out there that can be trusted. Everybody gets funny with the money. It’s the great American rip-off, and it’s still going on.”

Diddley was unaware of the recent Recording Artists Coalition and its campaign to use political reform and public opinion to revamp the often arcane practices of the music industry, but after hearing about it, he said he’s a fan. And at the awards ceremony at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel, he will make an informal contribution to the ongoing battle by seeking out young songwriters. “I have advice for them: Don’t trust anybody in this funky business.”

Then it’s make to the business he knows best: making music. Diddley will perform at 2:30 p.m. Sunday at the Doheny Blues Festival at Doheny State Beach, just south of Dana Point Harbor.