BY any measure, it's been
a decent year for David "Honey boy" Edwards.
He won a Grammy for his work on "Last of the Delta Bluesmen," had
a part in the feature film "Walk Hard," is touring
and has a new album out, "Roamin' and Ramblin' " (earwigmusic.com).
Not bad for a man who didn't even have electricity in his house
when he was growing up in the Mississippi countryside.
And at 92, Edwards must be thinking about the future, because
he treated himself to a new Gibson six-string at a Chicago guitar
store the other day. It's a long way from when he first played,
inspired by his father.
"My daddy was a sharecropper, and he played music for hisself.
He played guitar and violin," Edwards says, pronouncing
it "GIT-ar."
"Every time he put his guitar down, I'd pick it up.
"My daddy got me my first guitar in 1928 - I was 13. He
bought it from a man who ordered it from Sears, Roebuck and paid
by the month. He paid $8 for it, and my daddy gave him $4 for
it. That was a lot of money back then."
In addition to making music (ragtime and other dance music,
Edwards says), his father made whiskey "out of corn, rye
and sugar," and "home-brewed beer" - which he
tried at 13 and got drunk for the first time.
In his long career - which took him from his Mississippi Delta
home north to Chicago, where he lives today - Edwards has played
with a host of blues legends: Charlie Patton, Sonny Boy Williamson,
Lightnin' Hopkins, Magic Sam, Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson
among them.
As for the legend that Johnson sold his soul to the devil for
the skill to play the blues, Edwards, who played with him in
1937, says: "He told me he sold his soul to the devil, but
I don't know. He told everybody he did it. He coulda done it.
I know I didn't."
In 1942, Edwards was recorded for the first time, by folklorist/musicologist
Alan Lomax collecting songs for the Library of Congress. Lomax
gave him $20 for his efforts, Edwards says.
He hadn't made a record before that because, he says, "I
didn't care about no recordings. I was gambling, running around
and making more money [playing music] up and down the streets."
Traveling in the South, Edwards played in "li'l ol' clubs
and beer parlors and at country dances."
Saturday, with Koko Taylor and others, Edwards plays at Town
Hall for the National Heritage Masters: Blues Legends show.
