Patton claimed to have learned the Blues from a fellow who, If I remember correctly , he called "Blake" that came to the Parchman farm from Texas--if you listen to his stuff, you will notice that he didn't only play blues, but a lot of old time stuff as well--

Blues was, apparently, a new craze that swept through the Delta during the teens and twenties, and the Lomaxes ignored it for many years, in favor of the old time stuff that was disappearing at the time, not thinking that there would be a time when people would want to know where it came from--You don't know what you've got til it's gone, I guess--

It seems odd to me that we know about the whole lives of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, and yet the birht of the blues, from this very century, is so remote and obscure--