David "Honeyboy" Edwards - 1942, 1979 & 1991 Delta Bluesman (1992)

> The album

The last of the early delta bluesmen

David "Honeyboy" Edwards is a perfect illustration of how the Chicago blues appeared when Mississippi Delta bluesmen moved up north to the Windy City, like he did himself.
Born in 1915 in Shaw, about 20 km north west of Indianola, he started roaming the Delta roads and streets at age 14. For the next 20 years or so, he lived the life of an itinerant bluesman busking at street corners and playing the usual blues circuit : barrelhouses, juke joints or brothels, fish fry parties, picnics or Saturday night dances… anywhere people were ready to listen to blues and pay a few dimes for it. 

During this rambling period he met and played with such legendary Delta blues pioneers as Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, Tommy McClennan, Peetie Wheatstraw, Son House, Little Walter Jacobs, Robert Lockwood Jr., Tommy Johnson, Johnny Shines, Big Joe Williams... The legend says he was with Johnson on the 1938 evening when Johnson drank the poison liquor that killed him.

Around 1932, Big Joe Williams had taken "Honeyboy" with him to tour the Mississippi and Louisiana "chitlin' circuit". In 1942, Library of Congress ethno-musicologist Alan Lomax recorded about fifteen songs from "Honeyboy" in Clarksdale. In the early fifties, "Honeyboy" definitely moved up north to Chicago, where he played in small clubs and street corners, recording some tracks for different labels that remained unreleased for many years.

In 1972, in Chicago, "Honeyboy" became friend with Michael Frank, a young harmonica player and blues fan. Four years later, in 1976, they formed The Honeyboy Edwards Blues Band, playing in the North Side clubs until Frank founded the Earwig Music label in 1979, releasing an album titled "Old Friends Together For The First Time" featuring "Honeyboy" (guitar), Sunnyland Slim (piano), Arthur Lee Stevenson aka Kansas City Red (drums), Floyd Jones (bass), and Big Walter Horton (harmonica).
Thirteen years later, in 1992, Frank's Earwig Music released this album, "Delta Bluesman", that combines early Lomax tracks from the 1942's Clarksdale tapes with 1979 and 1991 recordings.

"Honeyboy" pursued his performing and recording career until April 2011, when he played his last 2 shows during the Clarksdale Juke Joint Festival. Four months later, on August 29, 2011, he died at his Chicago home from heart failure. He was 96 !

The album "Delta Bluesman" might seem artificial and wobbly at first glance. In fact it is a very interesting analysis of the migration of the pre-war Delta acoustic country blues  to post-war electric Chicago blues, resulting from the arrival in the Northern industrial city of many Mississippi rural bluesmen in the late 1940s and during the 1950s & 1960s decades, in the same way that many Louisiana bluesmen moved to neighboring Texas.

The first half gathers twelve acoustic solo tracks recorded in 1942 by Lomax; the second half, eight pieces recorded by "Honeyboy" with a band many  years later in Chicago and London, in 1979 and 1991 (*). Two sides of the same man, equally talented in acoustic country blues and electric Chicago style.
History flows from one song to the next, cut by six enriching spoken interludes of "Honeyboy" telling funny and interesting memories of the past. From 1942 or 1979 &1991, acoustic or electric, this album is down-home as can be. Behind the Chicago tracks, the rural Delta blues watermarks are always audible.
When David "Honeyboy" Edwards passed, the last living witness of the heroic Charley Patton and Robert Johnson era disappeared. ■

(*) Tracks 1, 2, 4 to 14 were produced and recorded for the Library Of Congress in July 1942 by Alan Lomax in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Tracks 17, 19, 21 were recorded in October 1991, at IdealSound Recorders, London. Tracks 16, 23, 24, 26 were recorded in December, 1991 at Acme Recording Studios, Chicago. Track 27 was recorded in June, 1979 at Acme Recording Studios, Chicago. The "missing" numbers are spoken tracks

History

► The bluesmen's "hobo" life told by David "Honeyboy" Edwards : 

"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." (quoted from the 1981 book "Deep Blues" by Robert Palmer).

► "Army Blues", a rare video of from 1942 (note his incredible guitar technique !) : https://youtu.be/4FMpW9laHIY

Interviews & Talks

► Audio docs of "Honeyboy" talking about Robert Johnson :
→ https://youtu.be/i8AanZBEnDU
→ https://youtu.be/Rbxh6Iew7rM
→ https://youtu.be/3U1o4sHC6ug
► About his life in Mississippi : https://youtu.be/AGntY_lJPDs
► Honeyboy and the history of the Blues Trail : https://youtu.be/TGvs8pAHTH8
► Telling stories about his early days as a blues musician at the Toledo University in 2007 : https://youtu.be/uiicSdeS8OM

► His final Q&A session in April  2011 at the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale (5-part playlist) : https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA91845EEC0250FD9
► "Honeyboy" tells his story : https://youtu.be/5500z0aGhK0
► Interviewed by GG Amos at the Sacramento Blues Festival in 1986 : https://youtu.be/1rj-xOBBBz4
► On Acoustic Life : https://youtu.be/JNnFH7agPuQ
► "Honeyboy" life story interview : https://youtu.be/OI4J3LTvUAk

Live videos

► At Spaziomusica in Pavia (Italy) in 1992 (1h32) : https://youtu.be/NtevxyWwqbs
► At The Montreal Jazz Festival in 1998 (awful video quality!) :
→ Part 1 : https://youtu.be/qJrEhcs0His
→ Part 2 : https://youtu.be/N0qpeR7sGts
► At the Cat Head Mini Blues Fest, Clarksdale, in 2005 :
→ Part 1 : https://youtu.be/UlTm0dXWZFo
→ Part 2 : https://youtu.be/FdJ_PY-H9FA
► At BB King's in New York City in 2007 (with his longtime manager and friend, Michael Frank, on harmonica, and Rocky Lawrence, also a longtime sideman, on second guitar) : https://youtu.be/hIhSL45GTYQ

► Live in Memphis in May 2007 : https://youtu.be/AKupSIktzGM
► In Sept 2009 at 94 : https://youtu.be/MDfmpgjkvfc
► At Biscuits & Blues, San Francisco, in 2009 : https://youtu.be/Ig91Z0-rBfo
► In 2010, at 95, with Jeff Dale on guitar & M. Frank on harmonica :
→ Part 1 : https://youtu.be/5GYIi60RgaE
→ Part 2 : https://youtu.be/CEpZkXVgazs
► "Apron Strings" at the 7th annual Juke Joint Festival in Clarksdale in April 2010 : https://youtu.be/RM_qEyn62l4

► Still at the top of his game at 95, at the Kitchener Blues Festival in Aug 2010 : https://youtu.be/3RmfKr8FryM
► "That's Alright" at the Yale Hotel in Vancouver on March 28, 2010, at 94  (with Les Copeland on guitar and Michael Frank on harmonica) : https://youtu.be/hApxuarjzwE
► At WBEZ Chicago Public Radio : https://youtu.be/TRgg_9TmI-w
► At The Hult Center in Eugene, Oregon, in his 90's at the time : https://youtu.be/PnB8d6_U_2s

► 'Sweet Home Chicago" :
→ At the Sheffield Boardwalk in Sept 2009 : https://youtu.be/-BjgLGkl1j4
→ At the Briggs Farm Blues Festival, Nescopeck, PA, in July 2010 : https://youtu.be/KzfNDwlpvtQ
► "Going Down Slow" at the Briggs Farm Blues Festival, Nescopeck, PA, in July 10, 2010 : https://youtu.be/J895Pp4k6hI

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