In three years at Rolling Stone, I’ve done interviews with lots of musicians. The best of them usually end up in the magazine, but some gems occasionally fall through the cracks.

In June, 2006, I went to a show at BB King Blues Club featuring two true legends of Mississippi Delta blues, Robert "Junior" Lockwood and David "Honeyboy" Edwards. Both were 91 years old at the time and contemporaries of Robert Johnson: Lockwood learned how to play guitar from Johnson, who lived with his mother for ten years, and, at some point, Lockwood added the "Junior" to his name to emphasize the connection. Edwards was a colleague and friend of Johnson's who was there on the night in 1938 when the iconic bluesman — who sold his soul to the devil to play guitar so well — was poisoned for sleeping with another man's wife.

The interviews were fascinating and we hoped to make them into a piece about these two giants in the history of American music still touring the country in their 90s. As often happens, the piece was pushed back a few times to make room for more breaking news and, at some point, it fell off our radar. When Lockwood died in late 2006, we were able to use some of the interview with him in our obituary. But the Honeyboy Edwards interview never ran at all. I was looking through old transcripts recently and realized that some of this stuff is too fascinating — and historically important — to exist only as a Word file on my hard drive. So here it is.

Where do you think the blues began?

Honeyboy Edwards: Blues started probably back, how I got it, back in slavery, when people working in the fields would holler songs and things. When you holler songs, it makes the day go short. Then in the '20s, Mama Rainey, Ida Cox, Bessie Smith, Blind Lemon and them come out with the blues, they named in the blues.

Do you remember from the first time you heard the Blues?

Honeyboy Edwards: The first time I heard the Blues, it was Barbeque Bob. He played the blues on a piano. Then I heard Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Blake, all those guys came up, then the guitar players come on in, then Charlie Patton come on in, in the '30s. I knew him. And Tommy Johnson, I knew him. I knew them all personally.

How did it sound?

Honeyboy Edwards: I liked the sound of it. It makes a person, if you got a good mind, to think about some things. Blues is something like going to school. If you sang the blues right, you may start questioning things. The blues is natural. If you learn the Blues, you know 'em.

You also knew Robert Johnson.

Honeyboy Edwards: Robert Johnson was four years older than me. He'd be about 94 now. I'd probably be playing with him today. When I first met him, he was playing with Son House in Memphis. I was 22 years old and he was 26. Robert Johnson liked two things, two things he was really crazy about: Whiskey and women. He left in the first part of 1936 and recorded in Texas and when he come back he was the best guitar player in the state of Mississippi. When he left, he wasn't playing much, he was playing harmonica. He just went off to himself and come back like that. My cousin was his girlfriend, Willie May. She's still in Memphis.

You were there the night he died, right?

Honeyboy Edwards: Me and Sonny Boy Williamson — Sonny Boy number 2, Rice Miller — we was there the night when he got poisoned, but he didn't die right away. He got poisoned Saturday night; he didn't die until Wednesday. The stuff wasn't really hard poison. At that time, people couldn't get no doctors for emergencies, you know how it was. Whites would have the best doctors, and then, there wasn't too many good doctors anyway in them days. When the doctor comes up for you, it's the same doctor for the mule.

I knew right away that something was wrong with him. The night that he got poisoned, me and Sonny Boy had been playing [music] in the streets — we were always playing in the streets. Robert was playing [at a juke joint] for this man for 5 or 6 months. He had started going with the man's wife. She had a sister lived out in Greenwood and every Monday morning, she [said she] had to go out there to see her sister, but she was going out to see him. Somebody went out there and seen em and said 'I saw Robert and your wife walking down the street,' [he went] on back there and tell him, ya know?

He didn't want to kill him or nothing like that. He just, uh — I guess he was crazy. He had a good-looking woman. He just wanted to give him something to get him out of the way easy. He didn't want to go the penitentiary or nothing to happen behind it, so that's what he did.

Tell me about your first recording, with Alan Lomax.

Honeyboy Edwards: I first recorded with Alan Lomax in 1942. He stopped in Macon and recorded Son House, then he come on down to Oklahoma and he recorded me, then he went on down to Louisville and recorded Muddy Waters. He was all over. He did a lot of stuff in Texas. I didn’t think that recording was going to become so famous. I was just playing. He gave me some money to get me a woman and some whiskey. That's all I wanted to spend it on.