Still singing the blues

For Dave Honeyboy Edwards - now in his 93rd year - played a part in many of the key moments of the blues.

He rubbed shoulders with Robert Johnson, of course. But he also knew Charlie Patton, Big Joe Williams, Rice "Sonny Boy Williamson" Miller, Howlin' Wolf, Peetie Wheatstraw, Sunnyland Slim, Lightnin' Hopkins, Big Walter, Little Walter, Magic Sam, Muddy Waters, and... You get the idea?

They all helped shape his approach to his music. All giants in the world of the blues. But he is happy to single out one particular player as a big influence.

"It was in '29 when Tommy Johnson come down from Crystal Springs, Mississippi," he recalls.

"He was just a little guy, tan colored, easy-going; but he drank a whole lot. At night times, we'd go there and listen to Tommy Johnson play. Listening to Tommy, that's when I really learned something about how to play guitar."

Neatly, Tommy Johnson's best known song is Big Road Blues. And the roads of Honeyboy Edwards's life have been big - and long.

He left his home town of Shaw and the sharecropper's life as a teenager, when he met Delta bluesman Big Joe Williams. Following Big Joe, he hopped the freight trains of blues lore - the Pea Vine, the Southern, the Yellow Dog, learning to play on street corners in small towns and the good-timing houses of New Orleans.

Honeyboy's itinerant life took him throughout the South as musician and gambler. During the mid-1930s he worked both as a solo player and with Robert Johnson, Tommy Johnson, and Tommy McClellan..

Honeyboy appears at the Boardwalk on Sunday, August 19.

It has to be expected that the fingers will be slower, the voice weaker. But the delta has a way of creating players who carry the blues deep in their soul. His guitar and vocal performances remain moving and intense and fans readily understand how he has been captivating audiences around the world for decades, treating them with his blues oral history.

He was first recorded back in 1942 when the great musicologist Alan Lomax visited Clarksdale, Mississippi for the Library of Congress.

A total of 15 sides were made of Honeyboy's music. And that was it until 1951 when Honeyboy again recorded commercially,producing Who May Your Regular Be for Arc Records. He also cut Build A Cave as 'Mr. Honey' for Artist.

Fast forward to the mid 70s and you will find a 60-year-old Honeyboy hitting the North Side Blues scene as The Honeyboy Edwards Blues Band with Michael Frank.

He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1996 and his book, The World Don't Owe Me Nothing: The Life and Times of Delta Bluesman Honeyboy Edwards is considered a classic of blues literature, earning a Keeping The Blues Alive Award in Literature from the Blues Foundation.

He is ever happy to help out with various projects.

As a consequence he has frequently been sought out by film makers historians, and writers for his recollections of earlier days and important musicians, becoming a featured musician and narrator in films and is mentioned in most of the major books about blues.

Honey

Boy Edwards, Boardwalk, Sheffield, Sunday, August 19: Box Office: 0870 1451207.