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Oregon Road Conditions & Cams Email Story to a Friend January 15, 2006 David �Honeyboy� Edwards plays the Delta blues during a Rogue Valley Blues Festival guitar workshop Saturday morning. Delta blues is �nothin� but a story,� he says. Mail Tribune / Jim Craven LIVING THE BLUES A blues legend plays in Ashland A slight man in a bright vest and leather cap cradles a Taylor acoustic guitar as he holds forth for about 50 mostly middle-aged white folks in the old Ashland Armory. "Hands-on teaching is not Honeyboy’s forte," says Michael Frank, David "Honeyboy" Edwards’ manager. But if you’re a master raconteur, little hands-on is required. Edwards is 90 and has been playing the blues for almost 80 years. He says he’ll play Tommy "Snake" Johnson’s "Big Fat Mama," a tune from his youth that was itself a distillation of still earlier songs. His voice rises in a plaintive wail. Cryin’, big fat mama, Advertisement meat shakin’ on her bones, Time the meat shake, it’s a skinny gal lose a home. He plays with the thumb and index finger of his right hand — no picks — his left heel stomping time, finishing to delighted applause. "Y’all play guitar?" he asks at the end of the song. "Not like that," comes a voice from the back. A morning guitar workshop with Edwards is part music technique, part performance art, part storytelling festival. Edwards is a member of the generation of players that included Robert Johnson, with whom he played. Edwards headlined opening night of the Rogue Valley Blues Festival in Ashland Friday and has returned for a Saturday workshop. (Music begins at 1 p.m. today, the festival’s final day; visit stclairevents.com or call 535-3562). The first question is about picking styles. "I only use these two," Edwards says, holding up a thumb and forefinger that are large for a small man. "You can take these two and do everything." He demonstrates with a turnaround — an interlude blues players often add at the end of a verse or chorus to set up the next one. He credits the near ubiquity of turnaround figures to the great Robert Johnson. "Where he got it I don’t know," he says. He demonstrates with a few bar chords, the third and fourth fingers of his right hand resting on the pick guard. Somebody wants to know what characteristics define Delta blues and how it differs from other styles. "Delta blues is country blues," Edwards says. "It’s nothin’ but a story. It’s got something about a woman (laughter). She left him and he feels bad. It’s close to gospel." Edwards says it’s different from "Piedmont and all this." Delta blues came out of southern Mississippi, where Edwards grew up, in the 1920s, with passionate, call-and-response lyrics and fiery slide playing. Piedmont blues centered in Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia and was marked by finger-picking, the thumb plucking bass notes and upper strings carrying the melody. Edwards’ father paid $4 for the boy’s first guitar. He left home at 17 to play juke joints and hop trains with the legendary Big Joe Williams, criss-crossing the South from Mississippi to New Orleans to Memphis and back. In 1938 he played with Johnson shortly before the latter died of poisoned whiskey in 1938 in Greenwood, Miss. Whiskey plays a role in many of Edwards’ stories. His first-ever gig came one Friday night in the late ‘20s when some country people had a party, and something happened to the musician. "Get Honeyboy," a reveler said. "He plays pretty good." Permission was sought of Edwards’ father. "My dad had a new wife, and he didn’t care what I did," Edwards says. He played all night, bolstered by "white whiskey," or moonshine, and came home to find his father on the porch. "Boy, you drunk," his father said. "From then on I got the taste for whiskey," he says. Whiskey led to the end of his playing with Big Walter. "He was a bad drunk." He hooked up for a time with Frank Floyd, a white harmonica player, at a time when integrated music was virtually unknown. "It never bothered us," he says. He got $3 or $4 a gig in the early 1930s. "It was bad back then," he says. "Salt pork was three cents a pound. Pinto beans was one cent." He segues into stories about raising chickens, slaughtering cattle, the details of making pork sausage. "Hope there’s no vegetarians," Frank says. "This is Ashland," comes a response. There are questions and answers on the use of the capo (he doesn’t like it), open tunings (he calls the open D tuning "Spanish"), getting started playing (he had instruction books), the use of a slide ("Elmore James was pretty good"). Asked what his advice is to the beginning blues player, he pauses a moment, then says with conviction: "Always tune your guitar in standard key." Reach reporter Bill Varble at 776-4478 or e-mail LIVING THE BLUES ">[email protected] . 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