Career
His best known tracks included "Saturday Night Hop", "The Road is Rough and Rocky", and "I Called My Baby Long Distance". In the 1950s, his own barber shop attracted blues musicians, who helped to kickstart Edwards" musical career. Edwards described his performing as "I play what they call the old Piedmont style, but I call it East Virginia blues "cause that"s where I learned it".
Inspired by recordings of Blind Boy Fuller and Blind Lemon Jefferson, he played locally and found employment in a sawmill.
In 1937, he relocated to New Jersey, working as a chauffeur and later in an hotel in Columbus, Ohio. Edwards served time in the military police during World World War II, but struggled to settle in the post-war years.
He eventually found work as a barber, opening his own shop in Washington, District of Columbia in 1959. After mourning Edwards wrote the song, "The Road is Rough and Rocky".
In 1982, Edwards appeared with the American Folk Blues Festival playing across Europe.
L & R Records subsequently released Living Country Blues United States of America, Volume 6: The Road Is Rough (1982), and after returning from touring Continental Europe, Edwards teamed up with Eleanor Ellis and Flora Molton. The threesome toured across the United States, Canada and Europe, including Charlie Musselwhite in the entourage in 1987.
Edwards then recorded for Mapleshade Records, releasing Blues "n Bones in 1989.
Edwards died in Seat Pleasant, Maryland in June 1998, at the age of 79. His posthumous release, The Toronto Sessions, was based on work he recorded in Canada in 1986.