TODAY’S CREATIVE LOVING PROFILE
The story of the blues is the story of the South, or so suggests director Scott Taradash in his documentary Honeyboy. Taradash focuses on the life of 87-year-old David "Honeyboy" Edwards, one of the only surviving members of the original Mississippi Delta blues scene. But the film's scope is larger than just one musician.
Edwards set out on the road at age 14 to train under guitarist Big Joe Williams. In crisp, colorful recollections, he details his adventures hopping trains, dodging policemen, playing cards and learning to play music to survive.
The film takes the blues back to its literal roots, as Edwards explains how field hands would chant in rhythm to the rise and fall of their hoes. He gives first-hand accounts of trading songs with Robert Johnson, and his take on Muddy Waters casts that breakthrough artist in a new light.
Edwards' anecdotes are punctuated with a handful of performance sequences, enough to give the musician credence but not enough to make this a concert film. Edwards doesn't sing so much as he radiates, the music shaking his body like electrical shocks. What he lacks in vocal or technical precision, he completely makes up for in intensity.
The non-blues fan may dismiss Honeyboy as just another music documentary, but Taradash wisely frames Edwards' story as a symbol of the deep South's 20th-century transformation. The film traces the fall of the sharecropping system and follows the singer on his northern migration from Mississippi to Memphis to Chicago.
Ultimately Edwards' story is one of disappointment. The musician somehow missed the spotlight that eventually elevated artists like Waters or B.B. King (who makes an appearance). The National Endowment of the Arts named Edwards a 2002 National Heritage Fellowship Recipient, a tribute that arrived better late than never, but this film may be an even more fitting legacy. 
Honeyboy screens Thurs., June 11, 7 p.m. and Thurs., June 12, 2:30 p.m. at the Rialto Center for the Performing Arts.
