Living the Delta blues

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Living the Delta blues
Michael Lello
Weekender

David “Honeyboy” Edwards doesn’t need to talk about history.

That’s because his life — and his music — have been telling his story for nearly a century. “Honeyboy” played the acoustic Mississippi Delta blues alongside the likes of fellow originators Robert Johnson, and he still performs 100 concerts a year as one of the last original Delta blues players, despite the specter of a 100th birthday in the not-so-distant future.

So, he’s not obligated to share his story. But if you ask him, he’ll oblige.

It all started, really, with the gift of a guitar.

“My birthday came, and my father bought the first guitar,” Edwards, 95, says in a recent phone conversation from his Chicago home. “I was about eight or 10 years old and living on a farm back then, in the country. He ordered a guitar from ears, Roebuck; Sears, Roebuck was having guitars back then.

“My daddy gave $3 for the guitar. So I started out on that guitar, and my father was a musician his self. He played guitar and violin, so he kept a lot of the instruments around. That’s how I started.”

You could contend that it also is, at least to some extent, how the blues began. Not many people alive today consider Robert Johnson a peer, but to Edwards — who will headline the Briggs Farm Blues Festival in Nescopeck Saturday — he was a friend.

“I met Robert Johnson in 19 and 25. I was 20 years old,” says Edwards. “I can remember I was walkin’, I had a guitar on my shoulder. I was tryin’ to get back to Greenwood, Mississippi — that’s where I was raised, around Greenwood — and (I heard) Robert Johnson and Son House and Willie Brown were playing together. Some boys said, ‘Willie Brown and Son House are playing at Flower Plantation, why don’t you go hang around with them?’ I went over there, and that was the first time I met Robert.”

Despite his deep influence as one of the forefathers of the blues, Johnson’s history is cloaked in shadows. He only recorded during 1936 and 1937, only two photographs of him were ever published and legend holds that he made a deal with the devil to learn the blues.

The details of his death are hazy, too, but one suggestion is that he died after drinking a poisoned bottle of whiskey.

And when he took his last breath, “Honeyboy” was there.

“I was,” Edwards says matter-of-factly. “I was in Greenwood in 1938; he died in 1938. August 16, 1938. … I was 22, he was 26 years when he died, because he was born in ’11, and I was born in ’15. He was four years older than me, but we were playing together.”

Edwards’ music, while not as readily recognized as the work of some of his contemporaries, has been chronicled since he began playing it. In 1942, renowned folklorist and archivist Alan Lomax recorded Edwards in Clarksdale, Miss., for inclusion in the Library of Congress. Songs he has written became blues hits, like “Long Tall Woman Blues” and “Just Like Jesse James.” Edwards is also said to have written “Sweet Home Chicago,” a song usually credited to Johnson that was given a second, more mainstream life by The Blues Brothers.

“Honeyboy’s” name, face and music have grown in prominence in recent years, too. In 1997, he published the book “The World Don’t Owe Me Nothin’”, which makes good use of his remarkable memory. He was featured last year on NBC’s “Nightly News With Brian Williams,” and a documentary, “Honeyboy,” was released in 2002, and it went on to win film festival awards.

He’s won many blues awards, including the W.C. Handy Blues Award for Acoustic Blues Artist of the Year in 2005 and a similar honor in 2007 from the Blues Music Awards. In 1996, the Blues Hall of Fame inducted Edwards.

In 2004, Edwards teamed with lifelong buddy Pinetop Perkins, Henry Townsend and Robert Lockwood Jr. for a historical concert in Texas released as “Last Of The Great Mississippi Delta Bluesmen: Live in Dallas” Townsend and Lockwood died in 2006; the live album won a Grammy in 2008.

And earlier this year, “Honeyboy” won a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammys, another late honor in a long life. “Honeyboy,” who celebrated his 95th birthday June 28, attended the Grammy gala in Los Angeles.

“I went to California, and there were more people than I’ve ever seen in my life,” he recalls, sounding a bit like an astronaut recalling a moon landing. “I walked — it’s called the red carpet? — I walked the red carpet, and there were so many people there, and when they put their cameras on me. … Oh, yeah I enjoyed it, I sure did.”

Edwards, who in 2008 released his latest CD, “Roamin’ And Ramblin’”, also draws enjoyment from continuing to play with Perkins, who turns 97 July 7 and is booked to play the Pocono Blues Festival July 24.

“Oh yeah, me and Pinetop were raised together. We’re still friends, and we still play together sometimes!,” says “Honeyboy,” a sense of youthful disbelief in his voice. “It makes me think about when we was kids, young boys, stuff like that. We get together and talk about it.”

For many of us, it’s difficult to even imagine the life that was Edwards’ reality at the turn of the 20th century. And it’s also difficult for us to remember where we parked our car at the mall. But “Honeyboy” is a true original, a musician and a man with a photographic memory. To call him a treasure of American culture would not be an exaggeration.

He has no secret to his longevity and vivaciousness, but, when asked what keeps him going, he replies with an answer that makes absolute sense.

“If you don’t keep going, you don’t want to move,” he says, forcefully. “When you move around, you’re still moving around, ya know what I mean?

“I feel alright. The only problem is I got arthritis in my knees, which makes it slow getting around. But my hands are as good as they were when I was 19 or 20 years old.”

So, it seems, are his heart and his mind.