"Honeyboy"

Born in 1915, Edwards lived on the road from an early age, playing music and hustling in the streets of Memphis and the rural South to escape the labors of sharecropping. Through his travels, he played with the greatest Delta Blues musicians (some of whom remained his friends and strongest musical influences), among them Big Joe Williams, Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, Little Walter Jacobs and many others.Edwards had it tough growing up in Mississippi, but his blues prowess (his childhood pals included Tommy McClennan and Robert Petway) impressed Big Joe Williams enough to take him under his wing. Rambling around the south, Honeyboy experienced the great Charley Patton and played often with Robert Johnson. Musicologist Alan Lomax came to Clarksdale, MS, in 1942 and captured Edwards for Library of Congress-sponsored posterity.Commercial prospects for the guitarist were scant, however — a 1951 78 for Artist Record Co., "Build a Cave" (as Mr. Honey), and four 1953 sides for Chess that laid unissued until "Drop Down Mama" turned up 17 years later on an anthology constituted the bulk of his early recorded legacy, although Edwards was in Chicago from the mid-'50s on.Honeyboy Edwards has lost none of his blues fire. in Chicago, where Edwards, now,90, resides and continues to perform.