31 August 2011
Andy Snipper
David 'Honeyboy' Edwards has died at age 96. He passed away in his sleep at home in Chivago.
Edwards was thought to be the oldest surving Delta Blues musician and had played and roamed with the legendary Robert Johnson.
His careeer saw him play with most of the legendary Blues musicians and he had been playing regularly until April this year when he developed heart problems and was a popular and regular visitoir to Europe and to the UK - hius last show in the UK was at the 100 Club in London's Oxford Street in 2009.
He won a Grammy in 2008 for the album 'Last of the Delta Blues Musicians - Live in Dallas' where he played with legends such as Robert Lockwood Jr and Pinetop Perkins both of whom died in the last year.
His longtime manager, Michael Frank of Earwig Music Company, said
"Edwards had a weak heart and his health was in serious decline in May, when the guitarist had to cancel concerts scheduled through November, Edwards played his last shows in April at the Juke Joint Festival in Clarksdale, Mississippi"..
Born in 1915 in Shaw, Miss., Edwards learned the guitar growing up and started playing professionally at age 17 in Memphis, Tenn.
He came to Chicago in the 1940s and played on Maxwell Street, small clubs and street corners. By the 1950s, Edwards had played with almost every bluesman of note — including Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, Charlie Patton and Muddy Waters. Among Edwards' hit songs were "Long Tall Woman Blues," "Gamblin' Man" and "Just Like Jesse James."
"Blues ain't never going anywhere," Edwards told The Associated Press in 2008. "It can get slow, but it ain't going nowhere. You play a lowdown dirty shame slow and lonesome, my mama dead, my papa across the sea I ain't dead but I'm just supposed to be blues. You can take that same blues, make it uptempo, a shuffle blues, that's what rock 'n' roll did with it. So blues ain't going nowhere. Ain't goin' nowhere."
