Blues lovers will eat this book up with a spoon! Honeyboy Edwards, although not a household name like some of the musicians with whom he traveled and played, was everywhere and played with everyone. His memory is amazing as is his ability to tell stories with honesty and the wisdom of his years. He grew up in the Delta, sharecropping cotton, but at a very young age knew that wasn't how he wanted to spend his life. With nothing more than a rudimentary guitar, he rode the rails, hitched all over the Deep South, played and sang in speakeasies, roadhouses, shacks, and bars. Eventually, he came to Chicago along with BB King and many others. This book is fascinating as an oral history of times gone by. ( )

wow
What a life.

David “Honeyboy” Edwards died in 2011 at the age of 96. The World Don’t Owe Me Nothing is his autobiography, which he dictated over the course of a few weeks while drinking beer in the backseat of a Lincoln parked in front of his house in Chicago. Put some music on, and that’s probably the best way to read this, too.

Edwards was born in the Mississippi Delta town of Shaw, heard Charley Patton, Tommy Johnson, Rube Lacey and Kokomo Arnold in their prime, played his first gig, drunk, at age 14, played with Robert Johnson and Big Joe Williams and went to Memphis in the early 1930s, where he hooked up with members of the Memphis Jug Band. Honey seemed to know everyone. He survived the Great Depression as an itinerant guitarist, riding the rails up and down the Delta, sleeping on old newspaper to keep his clothes clean, throwing dice when the money ran low. When things got desperate, he was always able to find a warm bed in the rooms of women who saw him play. He passed a few adventuresome months banging around with Big Walter Horton, played around St. Louis awhile, returned to Mississippi, then landed in Chicago in the late 1940s.

Edwards lived a kind of poetic American life that is gone forever. He knew firsthand the killing floor, Potter’s field, the county farm and the hobo jungle. He could play any song. He felt and saw the best and the worst, and he called it good. ( )