David Honeyboy Edwards

RIP: David Honeyboy Edwards

Photo by Jennifer Esperanza

We bid a final farewell to our old friend and the last of the great Delta bluesmen, David Honeyboy Edwards, who died August 29 at age 95. We had the privilege of working with Honeyboy on several occasions, including a classic 2006 Thirsty Ear Festival performance that we all remember fondly. Honeyboy busked with nearly all the early greats (among them Son House, Charlie Patton, and Robert Johnson, whose death Honeyboy witnessed). In 1942 folklorist Alan Lomax waxed 15 sides for the Library of Congress, the 27-year-old Honeyboy's first recordings. Despite a later move to Chicago, Honeyboy's singing and guitar playing never lost that rural rawness. In concert, he'd often sit and just talk, his accent so deep that it was hard to understand the words. But even the gist of those stories, tales from on the road in the 1930s and '40s from the perspective of a traveling black musician, were fascinating. We are proud to have known him.