Legendary bluesman Archie Edwards ran a barbershop for decades just outside Mount Rainier, where he held regular jam sessions starting in the 1950s with everyone from amateurs to blues greats.
Located at 2007 Bunker Hill Rd. NE, the Alpha Tonsorial Palace, was a hotspot from the late 1950s through the 1990s. On Saturday afternoons, musicians of all ages, races, and experience levels would gather to play the blues.
Born in Eastern Virginia in 1918, Edwards learned to play guitar from his father, a sharecropper who played harmonica, banjo, and slide guitar and hosted similar jam sessions at his home.
Edwards learned to play what is generally called Piedmont blues, which uses a more fingerpicking style that was influenced by ragtime and string bands.
After serving in World War II, Edwards worked odd jobs in the D.C. area before opening the barbershop in 1959. A chance meeting with his childhood idol, bluesman Mississippi John Hurt, led to a close friendship as the two played local venues as well as concerts and festivals.
Edwards regularly played with a loose group of musicians he called the Travelling Blues Workshop and began hosting the sessions at his barbershop. After one session, a German talent scout signed him to record his first album, “Living Country Blues Vol. 6: The Road is Rough and Rocky,” released in 1982.
A longtime advocate for blues history, Edwards co-founded the D.C. Blues Society in 1987 to promote traditional music, holding the first meetings in his barbershop.
He then toured the U.S., Canada and Europe, including regular appearances at a music festival at Prince George’s Community College, and recorded two more albums, “Blues ‘N Bones” and “The Toronto Sessions,” which was released posthumously.
Edwards died of cancer in 1998 and was buried at Fort Lincoln Cemetery in Brentwood.
His friends established the Archie Edwards Blues Heritage Foundation in his memory, holding regular jam sessions at the barbershop until it was sold in 2008. It then moved to a space in Riverdale Park until 2019 and now meets at 4502 Hamilton St. in Hyattsville’s Arts District.
Still standing, the original Alpha Tonsorial Palace was recently included on a list of 300 Black history sites around D.C. released to mark Black History Month by the city’s Historic Preservation Office.
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