David "Honeyboy" Edwards was an American delta blues guitarist and singer from Mississippi. He was born on June 28, 1915, and died on August 29, 2011.

Biography

Edwards was born in Shaw, Mississippi. He learned to play music from his father, who was a guitarist and violinist. At the age of 14, he left home to travel with the blues musician Big Joe Williams, beginning a life as a traveling musician. He continued this lifestyle throughout the 1930s and 1940s. He performed with the famous blues musician Robert Johnson, with whom he became close friends. Edwards was there when Johnson drank poisoned whiskey that caused his death, and his account is considered the most accurate description of Johnson's death. Edwards also played with other important blues musicians in the Mississippi Delta, including Charley Patton, Tommy Johnson, and Johnny Shines. He described the life of a traveling blues musician as follows:

The folklorist Alan Lomax recorded Edwards in Clarksdale, Mississippi, in 1942 for the Library of Congress. Edwards recorded 15 songs, including "Wind Howlin' Blues" and "The Army Blues." He did not record music for sale until 1951, when he recorded "Who May Be Your Regular Be" for Arc under the name Mr. Honey. Edwards said he wrote several well-known blues songs, including "Long Tall Woman Blues" and "Just Like Jesse James." His recordings from the 1950s and 1960s include nine songs from seven sessions. From 1974 to 1977, he recorded tracks for his first full-length album, I've Been Around, which was released in 1978 by the independent label Trix Records and produced by the ethnomusicologist Peter B. Lowry. Kansas City Red played for Edwards briefly, and Earwig recorded Edwards in 1981, along with Sunnyland Slim and Floyd Jones, for the album Old Friends Together for the First Time.

His autobiography, The World Don't Owe Me Nothing: The Life and Times of Delta Bluesman Honeyboy Edwards, published in 1997 by the Chicago Review Press, tells the story of his life from childhood, his travels through the American South, and his arrival in Chicago in the early 1950s. A companion CD with the same title was released by Earwig Music. His long partnership with the Earwig label and his manager, Michael Frank, led to several albums in his later years on various independent labels starting in the 1980s. He also recorded at a church that was turned into a recording studio in Salina, Kansas, and released albums on the APO label. Edwards continued the wandering lifestyle he described in his autobiography, touring well into his 90s.

Between 1996 and 2000, he was nominated for eight W. C. Handy/Blues Music Awards, including for his albums White Windows, The World Don't Owe Me Nothin', Mississippi Delta Blues Man, and a 2007 album on which he performed with Robert Lockwood Jr., Henry Townsend, and Pinetop Perkins titled Last of the Great Mississippi Delta Bluesmen: Live In Dallas. The latter album won a Grammy Award in 2008. He also won the W. C. Handy Blues Award in 2005 and the Blues Music Award in 2007 for Acoustic Blues Artist. In 2010, he received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

On July 17, 2011, Frank announced that Edwards would retire due to poor health. Edwards died of congestive heart failure at his home on August 29, 2011, around 3 a.m. According to events listings on the Metromix Chicago website, he had been scheduled to perform at noon that day at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago's Millennium Park.

Discography

• "Build a Cave"/"Who May Be Your Regular Be" (ARC, 1951)
• "Drop Down Mama" (Chess, 1953)
• I've Been Around (Trix Records, 1978 and 1995)
• Mississippi Delta Bluesman (Folkways Records, 1979)
• Old Friends (Earwig, 1979)
• White Windows (Blue Suit, 1988)
• Delta Bluesman (Earwig/Indigo, 1992)
• Crawling Kingsnake (Testament, 1997)
• World Don't Owe Me Nothing (live recording, Earwig, 1997)
• Don't Mistreat a Fool (Genes, 1999)
• Shake 'Em On Down (APO, 2000)
• Mississippi Delta Bluesman (reissue of the 1979 album by Smithsonian Folkways Records, 2001)
• Back to the Roots (Wolf, 2001)
• Roamin' and Ramblin (Earwig, 2008)

Film

In the 1991 documentary The Search for Robert Johnson, Edwards shares stories about Robert Johnson, including details about Johnson's death.

Edwards is the focus of the 2010 award-winning film Honeyboy and the History of the Blues, produced by Free Range Studios and directed by Scott Taradash. The film includes stories from Edwards' life, such as working as a sharecropper picking cotton and later performing music around the world. Musicians featured in the film include Keith Richards, Robert Cray, Joe Perry, Lucinda Williams, B. B. King, Big Joe Williams, and Ace Atkins.

Edwards also appeared in the 2007 film Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.

Awards and honors

• 1996: Added to the Blues Hall of Fame
• 1998: Received the Keeping the Blues Alive Award for writing The World Don't Owe Me Nothing
• 1999: Recognized in the Blues Hall of Fame for The World Don't Owe Me Nothing as a classic blues book
• 2002: Honored with the National Heritage Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts
• 2005: Won the Acoustic Blues Artist of the Year award at the 26th W. C. Handy Blues Awards
• 2007: Won the Acoustic Blues Artist of the Year award at the 28th Blues Music Awards
• 2008: Received a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album for Last of the Great Mississippi Delta Bluesmen: Live In Dallas
• 2010: Received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award
• 2010: Awarded the Mississippi Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts
• 2010: Received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Guitar Museum