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All Music Guide:
In the early 21st century, living links to the immortal Robert Johnson were few. After the passing of Robert Jr. Lockwood in 2006, David "Honeyboy" Edwards was generally regarded as the last of the Delta bluesmen who had actually played and traveled with Johnson himself, and with Edwards' death in Chicago in August 2011 at age 96, that last link passed into history. For much of his life, Edwards was something of an underappreciated figure, but not in his latter years -- his slashing, Delta-drenched guitar and gruff vocals were as authentic as Delta blues ever got.
Edwards had it tough growing up in Mississippi, but his blues prowess (his childhood pals included Tommy McClennan and Robert Petway) impressed Big Joe Williams enough to take him under his wing. Rambling around the South, Honeyboy experienced the great Charley Patton and played often with Johnson. Musicologist Alan Lomax came to Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1942 and captured Edwards for Library of Congress-sponsored posterity. Commercial prospects for the guitarist were scant, however -- a 1951 78 for Artist Record Co., "Build a Cave" (as Mr. Honey), and four 1953 sides for Chess that laid unissued until "Drop Down Mama" turned up 17 years later on an anthology constituted the bulk of his early recorded legacy, although Edwards was in Chicago from the mid-'50s on.
The guitarist met young harpist/blues aficionado Michael Frank in 1972. Four years later, they formed the Honeyboy Edwards Blues Band to break into Chicago's then-fledgling North Side club scene; they also worked as a duo (and continued to do so on occasion for many years thereafter). When Frank inaugurated his Earwig label, he enlisted Honeyboy and his longtime pals Sunnyland Slim, Big Walter Horton, Floyd Jones, and Kansas City Red to cut a rather informal album, Old Friends, as his second release in 1979. In 1992, Earwig assembled Delta Bluesman, a stunning combination of unexpurgated Library of Congress masters and then-recent performances that showed Edwards had lost none of his blues fire. He remained active up through the first decade of the 21st century, collaborating with Henry Townsend (who died in 2006), Pinetop Perkins (another legendary bluesman from Edwards' generation who died in 2011), and Lockwood on Last of the Great Mississippi Delta Bluesmen: Live in Dallas, which won the 2008 Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album. David "Honeyboy" Edwards also received a lifetime achievement Grammy Award in 2010.
Wikipedia:
David "Honeyboy" Edwards (June 28, 1915 – August 29, 2011) was a Delta blues guitarist and singer from the American South.
Life and career[edit]
Edwards was born in Shaw, Mississippi. Edwards was 14 years old when he left home to travel with blues man Big Joe Williams, beginning life as an itinerant musician which he led throughout the 1930s and 1940s. He performed with famed blues musician Robert Johnson with whom he developed a close friendship. Honeyboy was present on the night Johnson drank poisoned whiskey which killed him, and his story has become the definitive version of Johnson's demise. As well as Johnson, Edwards knew and played with many of the leading bluesmen in the Mississippi Delta, which included Charley Patton, Tommy Johnson, and Johnny Shines.
He described the itinerant bluesman's life:
On Saturday, somebody like me or Robert Johnson would go into one of these little towns, play for nickels and dimes. And sometimes, you know, you could be playin' and have such a big crowd that it would block the whole street. Then the police would come around, and then I'd go to another town and where I could play at. But most of the time, they would let you play. Then sometimes the man who owned a country store would give us something like a couple of dollars to play on a Saturday afternoon. We could hitchhike, transfer from truck to truck, or if we couldn't catch one of them, we'd go to the train yard, 'cause the railroad was all through that part of the country then...we might hop a freight, go to St. Louis or Chicago. Or we might hear about where a job was paying off - a highway crew, a railroad job, a levee camp there along the river, or some place in the country where a lot of people were workin' on a farm. You could go there and play and everybody would hand you some money. I didn't have a special place then. Anywhere was home. Where I do good, I stay. When it gets bad and dull, I'm gone.Folklorist Alan Lomax recorded Edwards in Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1942 for the Library of Congress. Edwards recorded 15 album sides of music. The songs included "Wind Howlin' Blues" and "The Army Blues". He did not record commercially until 1951, when he recorded "Who May Be Your Regular Be" for Arc under the name of Mr Honey. Edwards claims to have written several well-known blues songs including "Long Tall Woman Blues" and "Just Like Jesse James." His discography for the 1950s and 1960s amounts to nine songs from seven sessions. From 1974 to 1977, he recorded material for a full length LP, I've Been Around, released in 1978 on the independent Trix Records label by producer/ethnomusicologist Peter B. Lowry.
His autobiography is entitled The World Don't Owe Me Nothing: The Life and Times of Delta Bluesman Honeyboy Edwards. Published in 1997 by the Chicago Review Press, the narrative recounts his life from childhood, his travels through the American South, and his arrival in Chicago in the early 1950s. A companion CD by the same title was released by Earwig Music shortly afterwards. His long association with the Earwig label and manager Michael Frank spawned many late career albums on a variety of independent labels from the 1980s on. He has also recorded at a Church turned-recording studio in Salina, Kansas and released albums on the APO record label Edwards continued the rambling life he describes in his autobiography as he still toured the world well into his 90s.
On July 17, 2011 his manager Michael Frank announced that Edwards would be retiring due to ongoing health issues.
On August 29, 2011 Edwards died at his home, of congestive heart failure, at approx. 3 a.m. According to events listings on the Metromix Chicago website, Edwards had been scheduled to perform at noon that day, at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago's Millennium Park.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist}} template (see the help page).
Film[edit]
In the 1991 documentary The Search for Robert Johnson, Edwards recounts stories about Johnson, including his murder.
The story of Edwards' own life is told in the 2010 award-winning film Honeyboy and the History of the Blues from Free Range Studios, directed by Scott Taradash. The film features stories of Edwards' life from picking cotton as a sharecropper to traveling the world performing his music. Artists who appear in the film include Keith Richards, Robert Cray, Joe Perry, Lucinda Williams, B.B. King, Big Joe Williams, and Ace Atkins.
Edwards appeared in the 2007 film, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist}} template (see the help page).
Awards and achievement[edit]
1996: Inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame1998: Keeping the Blues Alive Award in literature for The World Don't Owe Me Nothing2002: National Endowment for the Arts, National Heritage Fellowship Award2005: Acoustic Blues-Artist of the Year (26th W.C. Handy Blues Awards)2007: Acoustic Artist of the Year (The Blues Music Awards)2008: Grammy Award; Best Traditional Blues Album for Last of the Great Mississippi Delta Bluesmen: Live In Dallas2010: Lifetime Achievement Award, Grammy; Mississippi Governor's Awards For Excellence in the Arts2010: Lifetime Achievement Award, National Guitar MuseumHis albums White Windows, The World Don't Owe Me Nothin', Mississippi Delta Blues Man, and a recent album in which he appears with Robert Lockwood, Jr., Henry Townsend and Pinetop Perkins, Last Of The Great Mississippi Delta Bluesmen: Live In Dallas, were all nominated for the W. C. Handy Award. The latter album also won a Grammy Award in 2008.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist}} template (see the help page).
Gallery[edit]
Honeyboy Edwards and band
Honeyboy Edwards at the Adams Avenue Roots Festival in San Diego, CA in 2005
David "Honeyboy" Edwards performing in Clarksdale, MS
David "Honeyboy" Edwards performing in Somerset, KY at the Master Musicians Festival, July 19, 2008
David "Honeyboy" Edwards and Pinetop Perkins in Somerset, KY at the Master Musicians Festival, July 19, 2008
Performing with Devil in a Woodpile at the Hideout, Chicago.
