Georgia Country Blues

Album review

The eight sides country bluesman Frank Edwards recorded in Chicago in 1941 for OKeh Records stirred little interest at the time, and the four additional sides he made for Regal Records toward the end of that decade weren't even officially issued until the 1960s, so the album he recorded for blues researcher Pete Lowry's Trix Records label in 1972, Done Some Travelin', was a bit of a revelation in the blues community. Featuring a delightfully wry and ramshackle approach to his material, and singing in a soft, easy, and effortlessly pliant high tenor, Edwards brought a refreshing vitality to the country blues formula, making the album a sort of instant classic of the genre. Done Some Travelin' is reproduced here, minus one instrumental track, and with four of his 1941 OKeh sides added as bonus tracks. It may be difficult to think of the blues as joyous, but that's exactly how Edwards manages to make it sound on his covers of Sonny Boy Williamson's "Good Morning, Little School Girl" and Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup's "Mean Old Frisco" and on his own humorous, shaggy dog tale "Chicken Raid," which details the problems of inviting a preacher to your house for Sunday dinner. The striking "Alcatraz Blues" (which was actually written about Attica State Prison in upstate New York) shows that Edwards had a focused and serious side, as well. Edwards only recorded once more, on March 24, 2002, in Greenville, SC, when he was 93 years old, which resulted in the similarly delightful Chicken Raid album for Music Maker Foundation. He died on his way back to his Atlanta home after the session. One of the last of the great country bluesmen to find an audience, Edwards is a true American original.
© Steve Leggett /TiVo