David “Honeyboy” Edwards talks touring with Big Joe Williams and playing blues down at the crossroads

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON APRIL 3, 2003

By Steve Newton

In rural folklore of the Deep South, the intersection of two roads has often been regarded as an evil place, the site of black magic. As legend has it, Delta bluesman Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil at the “crossroads” in exchange for his extraordinary talent.

Considering how Johnson’s name has been permanently set in music’s history books–even though he only recorded 29 songs and was poisoned by a jealous husband at the age of 27–there’s a sturdy foundation for the myth.

David “Honeyboy”Edwards–a close friend of Johnson’s who was with him the night he took that deadly guzzle of tainted whiskey at the Three Forks roadhouse in Greenwood, Mississippi–heard about the crossroads fable firsthand.

“He told me that he sold himself to the devil,” reports the 87-year-old bluesman, on the phone from his Chicago home. “He coulda, I don’t know. I went in the country too, and played in the crossroad where there wasn’t anybody. I’d go there and the moon be shinin’ bright at nighttime and I got whiskey in my pocket, drinkin’. I’d just play the blues at the crossroad by myself, then I’d get up and walk to my friend’s house and we’d drink and play there.”

Although Edwards is well known in blues circles for his relationship with Johnson, he actually learned most of what he knew about the genre earlier on, from Big Joe Williams of “Baby, Please Don’t Go” fame. When Edwards was 17 he travelled all over the South with the 36-year-old Williams, playing on the streets, in stores, and at house parties. But their trips did not always end on a happy note.

“One time we went down to New Orleans,” recalls Edwards, “and he met a woman down there. She had married a Creole and he had passed on and had a lotta good suits and clothes, and Joe started puttin’ on his clothes and gettin’ drunk off that Dago wine and wantin’ to fight me every night. So I slipped off and left him.”

Edwards paused in his itinerant ways just long enough for famed archivist and folklorist Alan Lomax to record 15 of his stories and songs for the Library of Congress in 1942, and although those sessions did nothing to further his career back then, over time they showed Edwards to be a notable contributor to the blues pantheon.

As the last surviving member of the original Mississippi Delta blues gang, Edwards is frequently sought out by filmmakers, historians, and writers for his recollections of earlier days and important musicians. And he continues to spread the old-time music of that region far and wide. He drives a big Chevy van down to the Delta each year, and his latest road trip includes a jaunt up north for a visit to the Yale on Monday (April 7).

All those nights sipping moonshine at the crossroads don’t seem to have done him much harm.

“My health is pretty good,” he points out. “I take one blood-pressure pill a day and that’s about all. I got arthritis in my knees, and that’s a little stiff, so I walk a little slow. But my hands got good action; that’s what I work with.”

To hear the full audio of my 2003 interview with David “Honeyboy” Edwards subscribe to my Patreon page, where you can eavesdrop on over 500 of my uncut, one-on-one conversations with musicians since 1982.