In the early days of delta blues, the flute was not found in blues bands for several reasons. 

The 8-key wooden flute, most commonly played until after the mid-1850’s, is generally not suited to playing the blues. While fully chromatic, these flutes are more comfortable to play in sharp keys, and do not lend themselves to intricate flat-note chromatic sequences. 

Boehm flutes, developed towards the end of the 19th century probably weren’t very available, certainly not second-hand, and would conceivably have been more difficult or expensive to obtain for early blues players. 

The flute is also not a particularly loud instrument. In a session full of saxophones, trumpets, fiddles and guitars, flautists would struggle to be heard without amplification, which hadn’t been developed yet. 

Alberto Socarras, a Cuban immigrant, appears  to be the first flautist to emerge in jazz (and Cuban music) in the late 1920‘s. Just a few years later, Wayman Carver, a black American born in 1905, became the first well-known jazz specialist. Wayman Carver grew up in Virginia, in a family of musicians and his first flute was found by his father in the trash at the naval yards where he worked. Unlike the experience of the poor rural Delta blues musicians, Carver grew up in an urban area, with more job opportunities and more opportunities for advancement. His talent was recognized, and he was given a scholarship to Haven Music Conservatory. He then went on to graduate from Clark University (one of the first private black universities in the United States), attended Juilliard in New York, and taught at Clark. Nevertheless, the Grove Music Online comments:

“Carver’s flute solos on Devil’s Holiday, Sweet Sue, just you (sic), and I got rhythm demonstrate that he was a fine executant, but also that the instrument does not lend itself to rhythmic swing.”

Other well-known or accomplished blues / jazz flute players include: Lateef Yusuf, Herbie Mann, James Moody, Donald Byrd and Bobbie Humphrey (one of the few women, and NOT mentioned in Grove Online, listen from 2:00 below). None of them played the 8-keyed, 19th century wooden flute.

Sources include:
www.flutehistory.com/Playing/Jazz.php3
www.flutehistory.com/Timelines/index.php3
www.allaboutjazz.com/php/musician.php?id=5584
www.oxfordmusiconline.comwww.wikipedia.com

"… you goes all kind of ways when you're a musician. You're like a loose dog, you don't know where you're going, any where you can make some money…"
David Honeyboy Edwards,  I'm from the Library of Congress track, Delta Bluesman cd, 1992

I was born in New Orleans in 1953,  and grew up in University City, St. Louis, Missouri. I lived there until I was 18 and yet I know nothing about the Delta Blues. I’d never heard of Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters or David Honeyboy Edwards. Was that because I grew up in a white community? Not really - I lived in a liberal, mixed black and white community. Perhaps U. City was still segregated in pockets since I do remember the first black child coming to my primary school in the early 60‘s. I folk danced in the Community Centre every weekend in my teens, and attended folk concerts (James and Livingston Taylor, Judy Collins...), which is where I found my deep love of traditional and folk music. I knew a lot of Greek and Serbo-Croatian music but nothing about the indigenous American music. I find that surprising and will be considering this further in my next few blogs.

David Honeyboy Edwards, Delta Blues musician and one of the last living contemporaries of Robert Johnson, died in Chicago last month, aged 96. His death marks the end of an era.

He was the son of a sharecropper, and the grandson of a slave. Born into abject poverty and unrelenting racism, he grew up picking cotton and corn, and listening to music that reflected the African culture his black ancestors had been torn from. He learned how to play on a guitar his father bought for $8, and like others of his generation, found music as a way to escape the poor, segregated south. By his late teens, he was living the life of a hobo, hopping on and off trains from St. Louis to New Orleans to earn his living as a Delta Blues musician. 

Big Joe Williams took in an interest in him: “ Joe learnt me how to play in the streets and get nickels and dimes from people and hustle - pass the kitty around in the streets, you know. He learnt me everything I know about the guitar. He played in Spanish and cross-key and he'd put me in natural key...”

Edwards made his first recording for Alan Lomax’s Library of Congress project in 1942, and continued to record for the rest of his life. He made the “big migration” to Chicago in the 1940’s, and settled permanently in Chicago in 1953, playing on Maxwell Street with all of the other big name Delta Blues musicians. He lived through two World Wars, the Depression, the Cuban missile crisis, the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War and 9/11. 

David Honeyboy Edwards' death does indeed mark the end of an era, and a shameful one at that. Perhaps America has atoned for that time with a black President in the White House and a new intolerance for the sort of racism that was endemic, but we should never forget. 

“Woman must have wanted me
For to be just like Jesse James…
Rob some passing train…

Lord I would have come see you
But your best man has me barred.”
David Honeyboy Edwards, Just Like Jesse James