I first saw David “Honey Boy” Edwards more than 10 years ago on John Hammond‘s documentary, “The Search for Robert Johnson.” As I watched Honey Boy and Johnny Shines, I couldn’t believe that guys who had played and traveled with Robert Johnson were still alive.
Johnson still seems like more of a vapor from the past – no video exists, perhaps only three photos and less than 30 recordings from a person who is a Titanic musical figure in my mind. To say that you actually knew and played with the man seemed more akin to saying you had once ridden a unicorn.
Shines passed in 1992 at the age of 76. Honey Boy, the more raw-sounding and acting of the two, and the one who had actually been with Robert on the night he was poisoned, died yesterday morning, a month and a day after turning 96. Though reports had him announcing his retirement on July 17, he actually had been scheduled to play yesterday at noon in Chicago.
I got the news this morning while checking the Associated Press on my iPhone, something that Honey Boy couldn’t have fathomed when he played his first show in 1928 at the age of 13. I shot a text to a friend and fellow blues enthusiast, who simply pointed out a fitting change in our Texas weather.
A bluesman had died. And we had rain for the first time in weeks.
He had played with everybody – and I mean, everybody. Charlie Patton, Tommy Johnson, Robert Lockwood, Muddy, the Wolf, Hubert Sumlin, Eric Clapton, everybody. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1996 and won his first Grammy in 2008, followed by a lifetime Grammy in 2010. With the death of fellow bluesman, Pinetop Perkins back in March, Honey Boy’s death really does represent the end of an era for the earliest recorded Delta Blues singers.
The man was a walking history book of the blues. He was always fond of saying “The world don’t owe me nothin,’” and that may be true. But I am glad that in the past 20 years or so, he got at least some of the recognition he was due.
Rest in the blues, Honey Boy. Your ramblin’ days are done.
Honey Boy as I first saw him, playing with John Hammond.
Honey Boy playing a little “Catfish Blues” for his 95th birthday at the Crossroads Guitar Festival.
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