Musician Eric Burdon, best known for fronting The Animals and later War, has credited Bo Diddley with essentially inventing rock 'n' roll by fusing two previously separate musical traditions. Burdon's remarks form part of a wider point about musical originality: even genres regarded as groundbreaking, from rock to hip hop, tend to emerge from artists blending and reworking existing sounds rather than creating something wholly new. Examples cited include Eric Clapton's synthesis of earlier guitar styles and DJ Kool Herc's foundational role in hip hop through looping soul and funk breaks.

According to Burdon, Diddley's innovation lay in combining country and western with the blues style once labelled "race music", creating a rhythm Diddley himself termed a "jungle beat". The article also quotes Steve Van Zandt praising Clapton for merging the Chuck Berry-derived and rockabilly guitar traditions with black electric blues influences such as Buddy Guy, Hubert Sumlin and the "three Kings" (BB, Albert and Freddie King), reinforcing the broader argument that rock 'n' roll's roots lie in the deliberate crossing of distinct musical cultures.