Honeyboy Edwards, Delta bluesman, outlasts them all

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May 11, 2008

'Honeyboy' Edwards, Delta bluesman, outlasts them all

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 12:09 a.m. ET

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) -- With his 93rd birthday a month away, David ''Honeyboy'' Edwards admits it's getting hard to walk long distances.

Fortunately for the man believed to be the oldest surviving Delta bluesman, fans and admirers never let him walk more than a few feet at a time. Every few steps, someone wants to shake his hand, offer a gift or share news of common friends.

''It's like this everywhere we go,'' Edwards' manager, Michael Frank, said during the Robert Johnson Blues Foundation ceremony Friday to honor the Shaw native. ''He can't walk through a crowded room.''

Edwards has a legacy that almost no living musician can match, and as the last Delta bluesman still standing he has found himself in demand. In the past year alone, he has released a new album, won Grammy and Handy Awards, appeared in ''Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story,'' and done interviews for three documentaries due out in 2009 and 2010.

With all the activity, though, Edwards finds he is often tired these days. He was in Tunica on Thursday for the Blues Music Awards, in Jackson on Friday, and in Crystal Springs on Saturday to play a festival on a bill that included Pinetop Perkins, one of the few musicians who can claim to have known Edwards when he was a young man.

Edwards, who turns 93 on June 28, will get a day to rest when he returns to Chicago, and then it's off to Europe for 10 dates. He still plays about 70 gigs a year and the calls keep coming.

Even among the footloose group of blues musicians who gained fame in the 1930s and '40s, Edwards was known for his far-ranging travels.

''When I was young, I was everywhere,'' Edwards said.

Edwards learned the guitar growing up in Shaw, started playing professionally at age 17 in Memphis and by the 1950s had played with almost every bluesman of note -- Tommy Johnson, Charlie Patton, Big Joe Williams, Sonny Boy Williamson I, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters -- across the decades.

Edwards was honored by the Johnson foundation along with the late Ike Zinnerman, who is believed to be the teacher who helped Johnson become the envy of his fellow bluesmen and a touchstone for a generation of rock 'n' roll musicians.

Though much time has passed, little about Edwards' style has changed. His latest album, ''Roamin' and Ramblin','' offers the kind of music Edwards would have played as he traveled first the Delta, then the region.

''Blues ain't never going anywhere,'' Edwards said. ''It can get slow, but it ain't going nowhere. You play a lowdown dirty shame slow and lonesome, my mama dead, my papa across the sea I ain't dead but I'm just supposed to be blues. You can take that same blues, make it uptempo, a shuffle blues, that's what rock 'n' roll did with it. So blues ain't going nowhere. Ain't goin' nowhere.''

[Shannon Dickey]

A few years back I had the good fortune to see Honeyboy live here in Denver. I chatted with him for a bit, however he was being innundated by "yuppies" who, to a one,

were asking him only about Robert Johnson, he took it in stride, but seemed a little annoyed by all that.

Musically, it was a fantastic show. Long live Honey boy!!

-----HB

[BeBop]

Was just enjoying White Windows last week.

[paul secor]

I heard Honeyboy Edwards at a club about 15 years ago, and he was playing very well. Great to know that he's still with us and still playing his music.

[jlhoots]

I saw / heard him live a couple of years ago.

He still had "it".

[andybleaden]

I was lucky enough to hear him play near where I live - twice

Better than all of that for me was getting a chance to play with him after the gig which was a real treat. He was just keen to have a youngster sit in and have a ball.

Really nice guy too

[sheldonm]

Here is a shot I made of him a few years ago.

m