Guitarist David Edwards dies at 96

David "Honeyboy" Edwards, a guitarist and singer who was present at the creation of the Mississippi Delta's folk-blues style and was one of its most enduring practitioners, has died. He was 96.

Edwards died in Chicago "while resting peacefully at home," according to a statement on his website. No cause of death was given. He suffered from a weak heart, his manager, Michael Frank of Earwig Music Co., told The Associated Press.

Edwards canceled his schedule of concerts when his health declined in late April, according to the statement.

Edwards, son of a sharecropper, began his career by crisscrossing the U.S. South on freight trains as a teenager. His circle of friends included Robert Johnson, the legendary blues artist.

During the 1950s, Edwards joined a musical migration to Chicago and found his place in the city's electric-blues scene, which included Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. He began recording albums in his 60s and performed into his 90s.

"Edwards embodies the continuity of the blues tradition and the various pathways it has taken," University of Maryland Professor Barry Lee Pearson wrote in the liner notes for "Mississippi Delta Bluesman," a reissue album from 2001.

The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, which sponsors the Grammy Awards, gave Edwards a lifetime-achievement award in 2010. He won his only Grammy three years earlier for performing on the album "Last of the Great Mississippi Delta Bluesmen: Live in Dallas."

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Edwards was born on June 28, 1915, in Shaw, Miss. He was the oldest of four children of Henry and Pearl Phillips Edwards. His father had three boys and two girls from a previous marriage.

"When I started to recording, I gave the name of Honeyboy, but my people only knew me by Honey," Edwards said in "The World Don't Owe Me Nothing," a 1997 autobiography. He got the nickname from a half sister, Lessie, who called him Honey while trying to get him to walk.

As a 9-year-old, he worked alongside his parents, plowing fields and picking cotton. The family moved east to Greenwood, Miss.

At 14, he learned to play a secondhand guitar that his father had bought for himself. He performed locally and got to know musicians such as Tommy Johnson, Charley Patton, Pinetop Perkins and Sonny Boy Williamson.

Edwards left home at 17 with another blues guitarist, Big Joe Williams, to find work playing music. They traveled through the South for months as hobos, hitching train rides from city to city, and ended up in New Orleans.

When he went back to Mississippi, he didn't return to the cotton fields. He moved at 19 to Memphis, Tennessee, where he backed Big Walter Horton, a blues harmonica player. They performed on Beale Street, the hub of the city's music scene.