David Honeyboy Edwards Artistfacts

June 28, 1915 - August 29, 2011
David Edwards was born at Shaw, Mississippi two years before America's entry into the Great War - as it was known until World War Two.

Hitting the road before his 15^th birthday, his performing career would cover a staggering 82 years; his last public appearances were in April 2011, less than five months before his death.
Honeyboy was the last living link to Robert Johnson, and he knew and played with everyone from Charlie Patton, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter and Muddy Waters to, in 2004, Keith Richards. The career of the last of the Great Delta Bluesmen spanned nearly the entire recorded history of the blues.
David Edwards came from a musical family; his sharecropper parents - who called him "Honey" - were both competent musicians, his mother played the guitar, and his father who played both guitar and violin, performed socially; he also bought his son his first guitar and taught him to play traditional ballads.
Although he was recorded for the Library of Congress by the famous folklorist Alan Lomax in 1942, Honeyboy did not record commercially until after World War Two. In the 1950s he put down roots in Chicago where he recorded on the Artist and Chess labels, but it was not until the 1960s that people began to truly appreciate his talents. Having made the transition to electric guitar, he also used bottleneck, and performed with a saxophonist and drummer as well as solo.

His extensive discography includes not only his own albums and compositions but guest appearances with the likes of Fleetwood Mac, the Harry Miller Trio and Eric Clapton.
He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1996, and not a minute too soon received a lifetime achievement Grammy in 2010, having received several other awards earlier in the decade.
Honeyboy's philosophy can be summed up in the title of one of his songs, "The World Don't Owe Me Nothing", which was also the title of his 1997 autobiography.

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