Dear John, Honeyboy's birthday is Thursday. He was among the last of the originals. Only a few left and then it's up to us to keep it going. All I ever think about. Except getting my car totaled in front of my house last night. But, I digress.
Han's is having his umpteenth annual birthday party on Tuesday of next week. This is always a great show. Hans puts togehter some of the best of the best in town and they become the Hans Olson Blues Band. Knock out show!! Go there.
Lots of things going on locally. Check it out. Something going on nearly every night.
Remember Showdown is coming up. Get your chops in order and come show the Valley what you got. Big fun!!
Forecast calls for hot today and tomorrow and....
Hug somebody. It's makes you both feel good.
Have a good week!!
Sincerely,
Jim Crawford, PBS
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Honeyboy
from Countryblues.com
Honeyboy Edwards was one of the last of the originals. This listing was written before he passed away, and it will stand in his memory. The article was written when Honeyboy was still active and it should be read in that context.
It is almost unfathomable that a man in his 90's would make the list in a directory of those who are actively contributing to the country blues today in the 21St century. David "Honeyboy" Edwards is incredible on so many levels it is truly awesome and amazing. One of the last originals from the golden era of the blues, he continues to tour, play and tell stories with an ever present sharp mind, nimble fingers and even sharper wits. While his compatriots have long since passed on, he not only keeps on rolling on but anyone who has seen him lately will attest "Honeyboy's still got it". He carried on the musical tradition of his father, who was also a musician. David "Honeyboy" --a nickname his sister gave him as a child-- Edwards was born in Shaw, Mississippi. He first learned music from his father, Henry Edwards, a guitar player and violinist for country dances. At the age of 17, he left home to travel with bluesman Big Joe Williams, beginning life as an itinerant musician, which he maintained throughout the 1930s and 1940s. "He was about 36 years old I was 17. We went to New Orleans. Joe wanted to fight me every night, so one morning when Joe was drunk in the bed, I slipped off and left him to go back to Greenwood. I was coming across a bridge where people were catching crabs in a net. They said, 'Boy can you play that guitar?' I started playing on the guitar, and they started chucking nickels and dimes at me. I said, 'I think I can make it without Joe.' I come to Memphis, and I started working with the Memphis Jug Band." During that time he developed a close friendship with Robert Johnson. " My first time meeting Robert, I was 20 years old, in 1935. I had started playing pretty good with the Memphis Jug Band. I tried to catch a ride back to Greenwood. I stopped in Lake Carmen and went into a country store. Two young boys my age were sitting around talking. They said Robert and Son House are playing across the field over there, go listen. I said, 'I believe I will.' "[Soon afterwards] he disappeared, left. People were surprised by him coming back and playing in that style. [Johnson's newfound, much improved technique prompted the legend that he'd sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his ability.] Me and Robert played together all of '37 and half of '38. We used to run around in Greenwood, Mississippi. There were a lot of bootleggers around then, serving whiskey and gambling in the back [of a local juke joint]. We played music in the front." Edwards was present on the night Johnson drank the poisoned whiskey that killed him, and his story has become the definitive version of Johnson's demise. "Robert had been playing for [the juke joint owner] for about a year. What happened was Robert started going with his wife. Greenwood was a small farming town, and if it rained in the country everybody would go into town. They'd see Robert and her. [The owner] didn't want to lose his woman, so he got him out of the way. She was a pretty woman. Her hair hung down to there [pointing to his waist.] When I got there about 11 o'clock, he was getting sick. He tried to play for a while, then he said, 'I don't feel good, I'm kind of sick.' I went home that Sunday morning, and I thought he'd be all right. Tuesday, I went over to where he lived, and he was crawling around, his stomach all upset, people giving him soda water and different stuff to try to make him heave that stuff up. He passed August 16, 1938. They buried him the same day because he didn't have no insurance. Robert was crazy about whiskey and women, but he was the easiest musician I met playing the blues. I never heard him cuss or holler or want to fight like a lot of musicians. He was a nice guy. If he'd left that man's wife alone, he'd probably have lived longer. To understand the essence of the blues of Honeyboy Edwards, the true-hearted gritty blues, you need to understand the existential reality of African Americans in the Deep South during Prohibition, the Great Depression, the migration of African Americans to the North and the post WWII civil rights period. There is no better source for this insight than the musicians who lived through it- and who lived long enough to tell about it. David "Honeyboy" Edwards, today still a traveling bluesman at age 95, is a living testament of the African American experience in 20th Century America as much as the life story of an American artist and the history of the blues as an art form. Edwards was uneducated and poor, like most of the original blues musicians who later became legendary, romanticized and even glorified figures of popular culture. (Nevertheless, despite any idealization, most of these bluesmen deserved their hell-raising notoriety). Edwards is a man whose naturally plain-spoken vernacular is as if you were sitting with him on his back porch, an affable old man telling his colorful tales. As can be expected from a hard-living itinerant bluesman, Edward's shows take us through a sojourn of turbulence and excitement, from his impoverished childhood in a Mississippi sharecropper's shack to international fame. Living he's done plenty. Blues entertainers in the rural south during the tumultuous times of the Great Depression lived by sex, white whiskey and blues, as did Edwards. He was a plantation laborer who shared with most blues musicians the unexpected discovery that his guitar music and life as an entertainer at Saturday house parties, the notoriously violent barrelhouses, juke joints and brothels, was a means to emancipate himself from the backbreaking, low paying drudgery of field labor. Here was a way out of the economic dependency and cycle of poverty associated with sharecropping. He could make more in a weekend of earning nickels and dimes for his songs than working up a sweat all week long picking cotton. So, Edwards became a "musicianer", as he describes his profession, and took to the road as a young teenager. He kept moving for many decades traveling throughout the South. Edwards has seen it "all" and tells tales of relentless womanizing and associated conquests by a footloose young man who enjoyed certain privileges with his status as an entertainer in these impoverished, isolated communities. Edwards had a full life as a traveling blues musician; a freight train hopping hobo; a hustler (a cheating gambler); a forced labor camp prisoner (the harsh conditions where he was interned for the mere act of vagrancy almost killed him); a levee worker during the 1927 Mississippi River flood; a husband and father. The oppressiveness of life during Edwards' time manifested itself not only in the harsh societal racism, poverty and the exploitative economic subjugation of blacks, but in the pervasive violence within the black community itself. Not dissimilar from today's inner cities, black life was cheap, black on black violence common and life expectancy low. Shootings, stabbings and poisoning, mostly by drunken men fighting over women or gambling money, was common and took the lives of many - including Edwards famous cohort, Robert Johnson. He was been friend and partner to most of the classic blues legends like Charlie Patton, Big Walter Horton, Tommy McClennan, Sunnyland Slim, Robert Johnson, Son House, Big Joe Williams, and Little Walter Jacobs. He has recorded on Chess, Arc, Evidence, Savoy Jazz, Smithsonian-Folkways and Earwig-the label that has been his home since 1976. The history of the blues is the history of Honeyboy Edwards. Though he's been part of the blues experience during its heyday, Edwards never reached the level of success as most of his compatriots- and only now has reached the international recognition he deserved. In part this was due to his relentless traveling- he never stood still long enough for anyone to find and record him. While Muddy Waters, Little Walter and many of his other friends enjoyed the financial rewards of their success, Edwards had to wait for his payday until the 60s blues revival, when he suddenly became of interest to international white audiences. Says Edwards about the blues revival and white blues musicians: "Because they're white, white musicians, when they play the blues, they get the benefit of our music. They get more recognition for our music than we do. But then it makes the blues more popular, too. I think a few different ways about it. But I was glad to do something with them, because if you ain't got nothing out there, you can't make no money..." Alas, as Edwards, the survivor and lately pragmatist, frequently says in his book: "The world don't owe me nothing". |
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| Out & About Tuesday, June 26 Carvin Jones, 7 p.m., Dirty Blonde Tavern, Chandler Wednesday, June 27 Carvin Jones, 7 p.m., Murphy's Law, Chandler Bad News Blues Band, Every Wed., 9:30 p.m., Chicago Bar, Tucson Thursday, June 28 Mikel Lander, 7 p.m., Culinary Dropout, Tempe Eric Ramsey Hosts OPEN MIC, 6 p.m., Fatso's Pizza, Phoenix Hans Olson (EVERY THURSDAY), 6 p.m., Handlebar, Apache Junction Arizona Blues Project, 8 p.m., Harold's, Cave Creek Friday, June 29 Rocket 88s/Jimmy Smith CD Party, 7:30 p.m., Rhythm Room, Phoenix Hoodoo Casters, 8 p.m., Max's, Glendale Blues Review Band, 8 p.m., West Alley BBQ, Chandler Sugar Thieves Trio, 6 p.m., Hyatt Regency, Scottsdale Paris James, 7 p.m., D'Vine Wine, Mesa Saturday, June 30 Danielle Nicole Band, 8:30 p.m., Rhythm Room, Phoenix Rocket 88s, 8:30 p.m., Rosie McCaffery's, Phoenix Tommy Grills Band, 8 p.m., West Alley BBQ, Chandler Leon J, 6 p.m., Sound bites, Sedona Carvin Jones, 9 p.m., Stingers, Glendale Paris James, 7 p.m., D'Vine Wine, Chandler Front Page Blues Band, 6 p.m., Barbudos, Prescott Blues By the Lake, NOON, Watson Lake, Prescott Sunday, July 1 Laurie Morvan Band, 6 p.m., Rhythm Room, Phoenix Sugar Thieves Trio, 9 p.m., Kazimierz Wine Bar, Scottsdale Rocket 88s JAM, 4 p.m., Chopper John's, Phoenix True Flavor Blues, NOON , Copper Star, Phoenix Monday, July 2 Leon J, 6 p.m., Sound Bites, Sedona
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Weekly Jams
Sunday
Bourbon Jack's JAM w/Kody Herring, 6 p.m., Chandler
NEW JAM! Sir Harrison, every other Sunday, The Windsock, Prescott
MONDAY
Bam Bam & Badness Open JAM, 9 p.m., Char's, Phoenix
Weatherford Hotel JAM, 6:30 p.m., Flagstaff
TUESDAY JAM Sir Harrison, 9 p.m., Char's, Phoenix
Rocket 88s, 6 p.m., The Last Stop (Old Hideaway West), Phoenix
Gypsy's Bluesday Night JAM, 7 p.m. Pho Cao, Tempe
Tailgaters JAM, 7 p.m., Glendale
WEDNESDAY Tool Shed JAM Party, 7 p.m., Draw 10, Phoenix
THURSDAY Tool Shed JAM Party, 7 p.m., Steel Horse Saloon, Phoenix Jolie's Place JAM w/Adrenaline, 9 p.m., Chandler
Friday
Saturday Bumpin' Bud's JAM 2nd & 4th Saturdays JAM, 6 p.m., Marc's Sports Grill |
| Moved? Changed email addresses? Please let us know of any changes in your address, email, or phone number so we can keep you informed about the Blues community in Arizona. Email us at: info@phoenixblues.org or write to: Phoenix Blues Society P.O. Box 36874 Phoenix, Arizona 85067 |
| GOT BLUES? If you are a Blues musician, a group, or a club that features Blues music, and would like to be listed, please send your info to info@phoenixblues.org and we'll be happy to list your event in our weekly Out & About section of the newsletter |
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