Hi Miles,

I think Odum 1911 shows that he was interested in the fact that there were songs very much like "Poor Boy Long Ways From Home" in form and lyrics and songs that weren't much like it, i.e. what we call blues songs and non-blues songs. He just didn't bring up the expression "blues songs," which he may not have heard as of 1911. That expression originated in roughly 1908, which was over a decade after what we call blues songs already existed, but still wasn't well-known in 1911. And he apparently had been spending much of 1908-1911 studying black religious songs.

Regarding what mainstream (read Northern, basically) audiences would have known when, during about 1912 to 1915 they largely would have seen blues as an instrumental form, as it happens, as it had been presented to them on sheet music. Only two known blues with AAB lyrics were published before 1915, despite the fact that AAB apparently became popular with folk blues singers in roughly 1905.