Originally posted to Instagram, January 21, 2021
Being a legend is hard. You attract attention. You make enemies. If you’re really unlucky, you die young, and that makes you an even bigger legend. This was the fate of blues guitarist Robert Johnson, whose untimely death became the stuff of rock and roll folklore. But we would never have known his real story if someone hadn’t been left behind to tell it, someone who outlived him by more than seventy years. This record is by that someone: Honeyboy Edwards, Worried Blues.
I first learned of Honeyboy Edwards through his first-person accounts of traveling the Mississippi Delta with Robert Johnson in the book ‘Deep Blues’. The image he created was of Johnson as a highly creative, adventurous, fun-loving person; a world away from the solitary, haunted archetype that developed after Johnson’s death. Edwards’ story revealed a lot, not just about Johnson, but about Edwards himself, a man who’d been everywhere, seen everything, and played side-by-side with all the great legends of the blues, but who remained kind and humble and content with a career spent mostly in supporting roles. In fact, this record contains some of Edwards’ first work as a solo artist, some thirty years after Robert Johnson’s death.
This record is made up of calm, easygoing acoustic blues songs, presumably recorded in a casual setting, since you can sometimes hear people talking in the background between songs. Despite not having much experience as a frontman, Edwards delivers lots of memorable performances on this album. The intense descending riff of “Bull Cow Blues” is so memorable, I’m surprised no British rock act (as far as I know) tried to rip it off. Edwards' take on blues standard “Break ‘Em On Down” is one of the most surprisingly relaxed and calm versions I’ve ever heard. And his Delta blues treatment of “Little Boy Blue”—yes, the Mother Goose rhyme—is an unexpected delight. I look forward to finding more of his records sometime.
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