David "Honeyboy" Edwards
| David "Honeyboy" Edwards | |
|---|---|
Edwards performing in July 2006
|
|
| Background information | |
| Birth name | David Edwards |
| Also known as | Honeyboy Mr. Honey |
| Born |
June 28, 1915 Shaw, Mississippi, United States |
| Died | August 29, 2011 (aged 96) Chicago, Illinois, United States |
| Genres | Delta blues, jazz, R&B, soul, folk |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, songwriter |
| Years active | 1930s–2011 |
| Labels | Earwig Music, Trix, Chess, Arc Records, APO records |
| Associated acts | Robert Johnson, Pinetop Perkins, Henry Townsend, Robert Lockwood, Jr. |
| Website | davidhoneyboyedwards |
David "Honeyboy" Edwards (June 28, 1915 – August 29, 2011) was a Delta blues guitarist and singer from the American South.
Edwards was born in Shaw, Mississippi. At the age of 14, he left home to travel with bluesman Big Joe Williams, beginning life as an itinerant musician, which he maintained throughout the 1930s and 1940s. He performed with the famed blues musician Robert Johnson, with whom he developed a close friendship. Edwards was present on the night Johnson drank the poisoned whiskey that killed him, and his story has become the definitive version of Johnson's demise. Edwards also knew and played with other leading bluesmen in the Mississippi Delta, including 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.
The folklorist Alan Lomax recorded Edwards in Clarksdale, Mississippi, in 1942 for the Library of Congress. Edwards recorded 15 album sides of music, including his songs "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 claimed 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 tracks for his first full-length LP, I've Been Around, released in 1978 by the independent Trix Records and produced by the ethnomusicologist Peter B. Lowry. Kansas City Red played for Edwards for a brief period, and Earwig recorded them in 1981, along with Sunnyland Slim and Floyd Jones, for the album "Old Friends Together for the First Time".
...
Wikipedia