Last Saturday
night, an intimate audience gathered at the historic and newly renovated Hale House in Matunuck to celebrate one of America’s most
original and valued treasures, bluesman David “Honeyboy" Edwards.
Born in 1915 in
Shaw, Mississippi, Edwards was the son of a sharecropper. He left home at the age of 17 to play
the blues. As he walked past a
cotton field on his way out of town a worker called to him, “boy you better put
that guitar down or you’re gonna stave to death,” but Honeyboy kept on walking. Seventy-eight years later the two-time Grammy award-winner, world traveler, and one of the last living legends from the original delta blues movement,
shared the music that started it all to a captive audience at Hale House.
During sound check, Honeyboy tuned a few
strings on his guitar–without a tuning pedal. He gave the microphone the old’,
“1,2 check,” and said, “sounds good to me.” Michael Frank, his longtime friend, guitarist, and President of Earwig
Records told the soundman that Honeyboy’s Fender amp “has too much
distortion and that it is not his sound.”
The soundman and Michael fussed with the amp for a bit as Honeyboy
mumbled a few unhappy remarks under his breath then looked to me and said,
“don’t never let nobody mess with your tone.”
Another friend
of Honeyboy’s, Rocky Lawrence, opened the show. Decked out in a black pin stripe suit with a matching hat, that included the obligatory
red feather tucked in the brim, Lawrence stomped black and white wingtips into floor as he abused his acoustic and turned the Hale House living room and
study into a virtual barnyard. Rocky ripped
though some old blues numbers from the likes of Muddy Waters and Robert
Johnson, and finished his set with “Mystery Train.” Meanwhile backstage, Honeyboy was
itching to play.
As Edwards took the
stage, he was greeted with a standing ovation. Taking his seat, he rested his Gibson Les Paul in his lap, and shouted,
“Y’all ready for the blues!” As the band kicked into a rousing version of “Meetin’ the Devil Blues” Honeyboy’s fingers slid up and down the fretboard like greased lightning.
During “Walkin Side by Side” Honeyboy struck a chord so
deep that it sounded like the whistle from the freight trains he used to jump to get
from show to show coming right out of his guitar. Suddenly he kicked his left leg forward and let
out a bluesy howl into the microphone.
His voice was smoky with a deep southern drawl. When Honeyboy sang, it felt
like tapping into the very root of what music is.
Edwards displayed his unique slide style during “Country Man” and kept it
handy during “Sweet Home Chicago” which sent the crowd into an uproar. Honeyboy claimed to have written the tune that has since been credited to Robert Johnson. Rocky explained
that Honeyboy also wrote “Every Day I Have the Blues” but stopped playing it
when it was credited to Memphis Slim. Rocky also noted that Honeyboy began
playing the tune again when B.B. King turned it into a number one hit in the
50’s because after that, “he really did have the blues everyday.”
Later in the
show, Honeyboy asked for his Martin acoustic guitar, which Rocky was nice
enough to tune for him. As Rocky did so, Honeyboy said that the blues are great because,
“if you mess up, there’s a quick turnaround for you to jump right back
in."
During “Going Down Slow” and “Big Fat Mama” Honeyboy dug deep into the fretboard. He held his guitar away from his body, tilted his head to the side, ripped a smooth run down the entirety of the neck, and smiled as if to say, “yeah I still got it.” Honeyboy finished his set with “61 Highway” slicing through a solo so suculent that Rocky let out a big bluesy howl.
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