At 93, a Delta blues legend carries on

David ''Honeyboy'' Edwards isn't ready to retire. (Steve mannheim)

At 93, David "Honeyboy" Edwards is the last of the great Mississippi Delta blues guitarists, a living link to legendary long-departed peers Robert Johnson and Charlie Patton.

He's not ready to retire yet, but he says the tour that brings him to Regattabar tomorrow, one of eight New England dates, is his last extended road trip.

"When you get to a certain age you've got no business being on the road, especially when it gets cold," says Edwards, who performs with guitarist Rocky Lawrence, a noted Robert Johnson stylist, and harmonica player Michael Frank, who's also Edwards's longtime manager.

In many ways, Edwards has never been in more demand. He won a Best Traditional Blues Album Grammy last year for "Last of the Great Mississippi Delta Bluesmen: Live in Dallas!," which documents a 2004 concert featuring Edwards, Pinetop Perkins, and their now-deceased colleagues Henry James "The Mule" Townsend and Robert Lockwood Jr.

While Edwards and his nonagenarian peers came to personify the notion of the blues as African-American roots music, the truth is more complicated. As Elijah Wald argues persuasively in his 2004 book "Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues," Johnson's deification and the Delta guitarists' elevation as the fountainhead of the blues was largely a product of the 1960s British Invasion, when Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, and Jimmy Page often spoke of the Delta bluesmen in exalted terms.

The blues was only one of the musical currents running through the Delta. African-American guitarists were entertainers who played a variety of styles and songs, looking to please as wide an audience as possible.

Edwards's wide-open taste reflected his upbringing. His father played guitar and violin, and Edwards was raised on a disparate diet of songs, from country ballads and spirituals to ragtime, pop tunes, and jazz.

"Back in them days, we used to play a few numbers by Jimmie Rogers," Edwards says, referring to the Father of Country Music, not the blues musician who played with Muddy Waters. "He did a lot of yodeling in his singing, and we liked that, so we used to play some of his stuff."

Edwards unexpectedly stepped into blues history on a summer afternoon in 1942, when Library of Congress musicologist and folklorist Alan Lomax heard him playing guitar in the court square of Friars Point, Miss. Impressed by Edwards's feel and phrasing (it was the same trip on which he recorded Muddy Waters and Son House), Lomax arranged a recording session in a makeshift studio in Clarksdale, but the plan was almost undone when a tornado roared through.

"It took about an hour and a half for the storm to blow over, and then we went on and got through about 15 songs," says Edwards, who included his original "Wind Howlin' Blues" in the session. "He gave me a $20 bill, and that was the most money I had in my life. I kept that $20 bill three weeks."

Edwards didn't record again until the early 1950s, though his career sputtered along until he met up with Michael Frank in 1972. Edwards finally started gaining recognition for his pleasingly gruff vocals and startlingly pungent guitar work while playing with Frank around Chicago's North Side scene.

Frank eventually launched the Earwig label to document Edwards, releasing several classic albums. Most interesting is 1992's "Delta Bluesman," which combines Lomax's 1942 sides with tracks recorded some 50 years later. Edwards still knows hundreds of songs, but rather than displaying his versatility, he is committed to giving his fans what they want, delivering lean, muscular Delta blues.

"He's very conscious of adapting his repertoire for the audience," Frank says. "He knows that he's an entertainer, not just a musician."

A bluesman by inclination and now opportunity, Edwards is the last of a great generation, but the blues was only part of the picture.