David "Honeyboy" Edwards

David “Honeyboy” Edwards grew up in Shaw, Mississippi. He was one of last living members of the generation that produced such vital blues performers as Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Lightnin' Hopkins.

Edwards first learned music from his father, Henry Edwards, who played guitar and violin at country dances and juke joints. When Edwards was 14, he began touring with Mississippi bluesman Big Joe Williams. Over the next few years, Edwards met and played with performers such as Tommy Johnson, Charley Patton, Tommy McClennan and Robert Johnson, as well as the Memphis Jug Band.  
 Edwards first recorded in 1942 in Clarksdale, Mississippi, for the folklorist Alan Lomax, who was doing field recording for the Library of Congress.  During the 1940s and early 1950s, Edwards moved to Helena, Arkansas, Memphi, and St. Louis. On regular forays to the blues Mecca of Chicago, he performed on Maxwell Street, an outdoor market that drew musicians in warm weather. In Houston in 1951, he recorded the minor hits “Mr. Honey” and “Build Myself a Cave.”

For a number of years, Edwards lived the life of an itinerant bluesman. “I used to walk all through the country,” he told Dr. Barry Lee Pearson. “I'd play a little town. I had it mapped out like I wouldn’t play the same town every Saturday. I'd play on the street corners, you know, and people would give me quarters, nickels and pennies to play different numbers.” Recalling that Robert Johnson was poisoned by a jealous man, Edwards learned to be wary of women who attached themselves to musicians.
 In 1953 Edwards moved to Chicago, where he took up electric guitar and played with a band. He recorded “Drop Down Mama” for the Chess label and became a part of the city’s vital blues scene. As blues lost its popularity among black audiences, Edwards began performing for white audiences in clubs and at festivals and was among the guest artists on the album Fleetwood Mac in Chicago. 
 “No other artist has contributed as much as a musician, witness and historical source in the overall process of keeping it alive,” Pearson says. “He remains a vital link between early Delta blues, the golden age of Chicago blues and the current blues revival.”