Turbula
Online since August 2002
Music

'Honeyboy' Edwards still giving the world something to think about

Published April 2006

Turbula recommends Delta Bluesman
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To hear sound clips or learn more about this release, Turbula recommends viewing its Amazon.com entry.



Mississippi Delta Bluesman
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To hear sound clips or learn more about this release, Turbula recommends viewing its Amazon.com entry.



Blues Blues
Blues Blues
Document Records; Bladnoch, Scotland.: 1975

To hear sound clips or learn more about this release, Turbula recommends viewing its Amazon.com entry.

David "Honeyboy" Edwards doesn't need a history book to tell him about the early days of the blues – he lived them.

Born in 1915 in the Mississippi delta, Edwards is – along with Robert Jr. Lockwood – one of only two men still living who played with the legendary blues pioneer Robert Johnson.

David Honeyboy Edwards But unlike Johnson, born just four years before Edwards but dead before World War II of a likely poisoning, Edwards keeps plugging along into his 10th decade.

Still touring and recording, Edwards says it was a distinctive style that made Johnson stand out, not his hot guitar playing.

"He had a different style coming out than all the other Delta blues players had when he came out, he had his own style," Edwards said by phone from Santa Monica, preparing for another show.

"If you like play everybody else, it won't be anything. You've got to have your own style."

For those who would delve into the history of the music, Edwards has a message: Forget about that and just listen to the music.

"If you want to know about the blues, first you have to learn the blues. It is something you have got to learn.

"There's always something in somebody's song that you done in life. You might have had a good woman; sometimes it's just worrisome life. The blues is something to think about it."

Having grown up when the blues was still developing out of field hollers and spirituals, starting to take its modern form we recognize today, Edwards has seen a lot of musical styles come and go.

And sometimes come again.

Echoing an argument the late blues harpist Junior Wells made about hearing his dad and uncles rapping back in the late '30s and early '40s, Edwards said what we call rap music now has a long history in the African American community.

"We didn't have a name for it, we just done it," Edwards said. "It's like rapping ... tapping and hollering.

Still, it's not like Edwards is exactly endorsing rap:

"The rap ... all the young people do it, all the same people do it together. There's nothing to learn. To play music, you have to learn it. Anybody can rap and holler and shake.

"But that's nothing to learn."




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