{"id":5072,"date":"2026-06-08T22:02:38","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T22:02:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/travelingboy.com\/adventure\/?p=5072"},"modified":"2026-06-08T22:06:01","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T22:06:01","slug":"honeyboy-edwards-a-witness-to-the-blues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/travelingboy.com\/adventure\/honeyboy-edwards-a-witness-to-the-blues\/","title":{"rendered":"Honeyboy Edwards: A Witness to the Blues"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Honeyboy would have turned 111 years old this year. This conversation was recorded after a sold-out show in a farmhouse near the Po River Delta in Northern Italy in 1992. From the road he traveled to the music he made…David ‘Honeyboy’ Edwards was the blues. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"\/
Honeyboy Edwards & T.E. Mattox<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

David ‘Honeyboy’ Edwards has been in fast company for most of his life. His running buddies have included the seminal roots of Delta Blues. Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, Son House, Willie Brown, Tommy McClennan, Tommy Johnson and Robert Petway were just a few of the musicians that Edwards called friends. He’s spent a lifetime sharing street corners, working juke houses and rolling the dice with the legends of blues, both past and present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Edwards has outlived his peers, and most of his friends, but shows little sign of slowing down. When pressed, he’ll admit to some ‘pretty good action’ as far as his guitar work is concerned, but even more impressive is his phenomenal recollection of dates, events and first-person accounts of the blues and its originators. According to Edwards, his introduction to the road began one fateful weekend in 1932 when, at the age of 17, he heard a blues man perform at a local house party. His life would never be the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Joe Williams was out there playing for a country dance on a Saturday night and I went over there where he was playing. I kept looking at him and he said, ‘Can you play?’ I said, ‘I can play a little.’ He passed the guitar to me and I started to strum ’cause I had a good lick, you know? And he said, ‘Yeah, and I can learn you, too.’<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

So, he come to my father’s house that Sunday morning, we eat breakfast and sat around. He played guitar and he asked my father, ‘Can Honey go with me out to Greenwood?’ We were only about two miles from Greenwood. My father said, ‘I don’t care, he ain’t nothin’ to do on the farm. He can go if he want to.’ I got my brother-in-law’s guitar and followed him. I never did brought his guitar back, I kept a-going with Joe Williams.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It would be the beginning of a journey Edwards, now in his nineties, finds more rewarding than ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“When I first started out with Joe, I played some in the streets, little clubs, cafe’s and joints, just everywhere, anywhere you can make something. Joe couldn’t read or write or nothin’, but he had a good mind and he could think of songs to sing. He had a good mind but didn’t have no kind of education, but he could think good and he wouldn’t forget nothin.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In order to further his own education, Honeyboy would soon find company with another blues traveller.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“After I left Big Joe the last of ’32, in ’33 and ’34 I was with Tommy McClennan. I was around Greenwood and Tommy was around Greenwood too. Tommy and Robert Petway, we all just go in and out together. Sometime I’d work with Tommy, sometime Tommy’d work with Robert. We all know’d each other, played with each other, you know?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Edwards, McClennan and Petway were just getting started, one Delta elder, Charley Patton, was already considered a living legend. Patton was one of the most versatile and influential delta musicians of the era, and Honeyboy was a quick study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I was with Charley Patton a little while before he died in ’34. I know’d him in ’33, he was at Marigold, Mississippi out from Dockery. He was still on the farm at Dockery Plantation. He married this young girl, Bertha, that was his wife Bertha, and the year he died, in ’34 they had went to Jackson and Bertha had recorded the ‘Yellow Bee Blues.’ She sung and that was the last recording he done.”<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The Sweet Life<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When Honeyboy reflects on his early days in blues he has to laugh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Before I married, I didn’t do nothin’ but play guitar and gamble. That’s all I done. I had a gang of women’s, you know. I had two or three, they was working and had good jobs.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Living the sweet life was nice but David Edwards was never very far from the music or the players who created it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I used to live in Memphis and I used to play with some of the Memphis Jug Band, Big Walter Horton, Will Shade, Son Brimmer, Little Frank Stokes and Old Man Stokes. I was young then but I know’d them all. Me and Big Walter Horton was pretty close together. I was two years older than Big Walter but he was a good harp blower ever since he was 14. I met him in Memphis, Tennessee, he was maybe 15 years old. I met him in Handy’s Park.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n