If you want a walking talking history of the blues than you need to talk to Honeyboy Edwards. He knew everybody, literally; he hung out with Robert Johnson, hit the road as a youngster with Big Joe Williams and paled around with buddies like Tommy McClennan and Walter Horton to name just a few. Filmmaker Scott Taradash has vividly captured that history in "Honeyboy", an intimate look at the life and times of Honeyboy Edwards which also ends up being a mini-history of the blues itself.

 Honeyboy was born in Shaw, Mississippi in 1915 spending his formative years roaming all over the state before following a well worn route to Memphis in 1935 and finally to Chicago in 1945 with Little Walter. If you you were black and didn't plow the fields or pick cotton you were something of an outlaw and Honeyboy certainly was that. "I was a hustler", he says. "When I leave man, Sunday morning I got me 75, 80 dollars. They going back working in the hot sun. I'm going into one of them little towns laying up with one of them women." Honeyboy never stayed in one place long, jumping freight trains (which he demonstrates), riding that "cool air" on top before he was able to afford to "ride the cushion" as he puts it. The blues life afforded an escape from grueling manual labor but not the suffocating racial atmosphere and Honeyboy doesn't pull any punches as far as where the blues came from: "Why I sing the blues? Hard Times" he says matter of factly.

 What makes this film so successful is that, firstly, Honeyboy has great charisma and is a wonderful storyteller. Secondly Taradash's technique is to take Honeyboy to his old haunts which gives the film an added immediacy. So when Honeyboy talks about hitting the road with Big Joe Williams in 1932 we see Honeyboy playing on the very railroad bridge that him and Big Joe walked across in Greenwood, Mississippi. In addition he visits Sweet Home Church were he went to school, plays a Charlie Patton tune in front of Dockery Plantation where he first met Patton and points out the exact spot where he met Robert Johnson and walks to a back alley where he saw Johnson perform "Terraplane Blues" to an appreciative crowd. He also was at Three Forks later on where Johnson met his untimely demise in 1938.

 Honeyboy was not a major figure in terms of blues recording. While his contemporaries began making records in the 30's somehow Honeyboy missed out, not getting an opportunity to record commercially until the 50's. That's not to knock Honeyboy's playing as even in his 80's he remains a commanding performer as evidenced by some fine solo performances intercut throughout. In addition there's some fine footage of Honeyboy in front of a raucous juke joint crowd with drummer Sam Carr and some great archival footage from 1969 of him with Johhny Shines and long time running partner Walter Horton. Alligator Records head honcho Bruce Iglauer astutely nails down Honeyboy's importance in blues history: "Honeyboy understands that his role was secondary, but his knowledge and his being there make him primary. ...He never inflates his importance." Taradash understands this and what we get here is bigger that just Honeyboy's story but an encapsulated history of the blues and the reality of being a black man in the deep south well before the civil rights movement. We get important first hand accounts of this life from bluesman Willie Foster who says he was literally "born on a cotton sack" when his mother gave birth in the fields, from B.B. King who vividly recalls plantation life and a different point of view from R.B. Moore the grandson of a plantation owner who exploited Honeyboy's sharecropping father.

 Honeyboy had to wait longer than most to receive his proper due but has surprisingly few regrets in what remains a full and active life. The film ends on a poignant note as Honeyboy relates his loneliness after losing his wife and the fact is that at 88 he's outlived just about all his contemporaries. Honeyboy remains philosophical as he looks back on his life: "A lot of people die without having everything they want. I had everything I want. That's true."

-Check out these related reviews:
Honeyboy Film Website

(Jeff Harris)

 "The Truman And Eisenhower Blues" is Guido Van Rijn's sequel to his much praised "Roosevelt's Blues" issued in 1997. In the latter book Rijn ambitiously examined all of the blues and gospel songs during Roosevelt's administration (1935-1945) that contained political commentary. In "The Truman And Eisenhower Blues" Rijn turns his attention to the Truman and Eisenhower eras (1945-1960), once again exhaustively analyzing seemingly every blues and gospel song with political content. African-Americans had little or no outlet to voice their opinions and concerns prior to the civil rights explosion of the 60's outside of recorded music. By carefully examining the content of these songs Rijn restores the voice to a people who had been marginalized and ignored but nonetheless had plenty to say on the political issues of the day.

 Roosevelt was considered the "poor man's friend" and the lyrical evidence suggests he was viewed "as a benevolent and powerful patron or "bossman"" while Truman was seen as much more fallible and "unresponsive to the economic plight of black people as well as their growing demands for equal rights." Rijn resurrects these lost voices by scrupulously dissecting over 300 songs, many quite rare, and transcribing 123 of them in their entirety. Rijn tracks the major themes which echo the important social issues of the era: the reconversion (converting from a wartime economy to a peacetime one), the atomic bomb, civil rights, the Korean War, presidential elections, the recession and the space race. In addition there is a wonderful companion CD containing twenty-six rare songs discussed in the text that makes for the perfect soundtrack when reading this fascinating book.

 There were practically no blues lyrics critical of Roosevelt but Truman was criticized explicitly early on as Rijn illuminates in the chapter "Those Reconversion Blues." Expectations were high for post-war prosperity and Truman's inability to stem inflation made him ripe for criticism. It wasn't long for the sentiment expressed in Champion Jack Dupree's "God Bless Our New President" cut in April 1945 (Truman became President in January that year) to became more pointed in songs like Roosevelt Sykes' "High Price Blues", Ivory Joe Hunter's "High Cost, Low Pay Blues", Smokey Hogg's "High Priced Meat" and Jimmy Witherspoon's "Money's Getting Cheaper." Eisenhower was similarly attacked as revealed in the chapter "Things Are So Slow" as the recession gave way to fears of another depression like the one in 1929. Among the notable songs are John Brim's "Tough Times", Jimmy McCracklin's "The Panic's On" and particularly J.B. Lenoir's "Eisenhower Blues" and the "positively revolutionary" variation "Everybody Wants To Know": "You rich people, listen, you better listen real deep/If we poor peoples get hungry, we gonna take some food to eat."

 If the recession brought back fears of another depression than the Korean war brought fears of a WW III. Once again J.B. Lenoir had plenty to say in 1951's "Korea Blues" and later in 1954's "I'm In Korea." There were plenty of other songs like Jimmy Rogers' "The World Is In A Tangle", Sherman "Blues" Johnson's "Lost In Korea" and Sister Rosetta Tharpe's joyous "There's Peace In Korea" cut the very day the armistice was concluded on July 27, 1953. Most of the American forces had been integrated by 1950 but when black veterans came home they found Jim Crow still entrenched.

 There were very few social protest songs prior to WW II but this began to slowly change during the Truman and Eisenhower eras as more began to speak out against Jim Crow. Rijn tackle this growing unrest in the chapters "The Freedom Choo Choo" dealing with the mid to late 40's and in "Alabama Bus" when the mass civil rights movement began to coalesce in the 50's. In the former chapter it was clear that "Truman certainly promised more than he achieved" as articulated in songs like Josh White's incisive "Free And Equal Blues", Big Bill Broonzy's "Black, Brown And White" and the Golden Gate Quartet's "No Restricted Signs In Heaven." By the mid-50's the civil rights movement became more militant as blues and gospel artists commented on landmark events like the brutal murder of Emmett Till, the Montgomery Bus Boycott forcefully articulated by Brother Will Hairston's remarkable "The Alabama Bus - Parts 1 and 2" and the plight of the Little Rock Nine chronicled again by Hairston in "Shout School Children."

 In the chapter "Atom And Evil" Rijn explores the the preoccupation with the atom bomb after the twin bombings in August 1945 on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In blues songs the word "atomic" came to mean anything of great energy, often used as a sexual metaphor as in songs like "Atomic Love" by Little Ceasar or in "Atomic Baby" by Amos Milburn. In the gospel world it "was used as a metaphor for God's power" as expressed in songs like the Pilgrim Travelers much covered "Jesus Hits Like The Atom Bomb" and the Swan Silvertone's "Jesus Is God's Atom Bomb"

 "The Truman And Eisenhower Blues", like "Roosevelt's Blues", is an invaluable and illumining look at the forgotten voices and opinions of a "group which otherwise seems inarticulate, inscrutable, or threatening". Through prodigious research and examining sources long ignored, Rijn has skillfully brought to the surface the opinions, worries and anxieties of a generation denied their voice for far too long. The good news is that Rijn's groundbreaking work will continue and hopefully we won't have to wait long for "Kennedy's Blues"

(Jeff Harris)