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From Songfacts: This song was written and originally performed Bo Diddley (Ellas McDaniel) in 1958. It contains his signature beat.
This was an obscure American R&B song The Stones covered on their first album and played it live at concerts from 1963-1964 and again in 1981. They were the first to bring it to a white audience.
Keith Richards: “I’ve never heard anybody, before or since, get that Bo Diddley thing down. Diddley himself was astounded, saying that Brian was the only cat he knew who’d worked out the secret of it.”
Bruce Springsteen would sometimes perform this at concerts, carrying the Bo Diddley beat into “She’s The One.”
Quicksilver Messenger Service recorded a popular psychedelic version of this song for their 1969 album Happy Trails.
Tom Petty and Bo Diddley can be seen doing “Mona” as a duet on Tom Petty’s DVD Hight Grass Dogs, which was recorded during Tom Petty’s lengthy stint at The Fillmore in San Francisco, California. Bo Diddley was one of the guests who opened the show for Petty during Petty’s extended Fillmore appearances.
From the The Rolling Stones – All the Songs book: Better known as Bo Diddley, Ellas McDaniel was a major source of inspiration for young British and US groups at the beginning of the sixties. A syncopated rhythm that had its origins in the depths of the Mississippi Delta before being revisited in the Chess Records canon of electric blues was the source at which the Rolling Stones drank—even before the Pretty Things, who took their name from a song by the rock ’n’ roll pioneer. “I Need You Baby (Mona)” was released in 1957 as the B-side of “Hey! Bo Diddley.”
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