***1/2 Honeyboy Edwards

I'VE BEEN AROUND

(32 Blues)

David "Honeyboy" Edwards was a pup in his early 60s when these 14 mostly solo performances were recorded. Twenty-two years later he's still going strong, a living connection to the heyday of Delta blues -- in the midst of which he spent his youth riding trains and hitchhiking from logging towns to levee camps to backwoods jukes playing music for tips on paydays. But the roots of his unadorned style go back even farther. They're especially visible in his take on Charley Patton's "Pony Blues," where he beats his guitar like a drum and sings in chanting cadences that sound distinctly African. "I'm a Country Man" showcases Edwards's slide-guitar prowess; high-end screams (pitched to his keening vocal asides) roll in contrast to burly low-string growls in a kind of call-and-response. On his own, Edwards packs all these songs with plenty of dust and raw grit, even when he's not bawling about "going to Chicago just to get my hambone boiled." But the late harmonica legend Big Walter Horton really shades the four numbers he's on. His rich-toned blowing brings teardrop notes to "You're Gonna Miss Me" and skips happily through the declaration of male independence "Things Have Changed." It's a union of kindred spirits, lost to the past if not for splendid reissues like this.

-- Ted Drozdowski