I recently took the opportunity to visit a website concerned with acoustic, fingerstyle country blues guitar and I could not believe the anal depths of analysis of, for example, Robert Johnson's, songs; down to the last inflection and nuance-even to the point of having to tune your guitar slightly sharp in order for it to sound 'authentic'.
When I responded that it was unlikely that RJ ever played a song exactly the same twice in a row they were horrified.
They couldn't accept that the SPIRIT of the song was paramount in its performance rather than a rigorous adherence to the minutiae of the recorded work.
There's a danger in over-intellectualising music and tearing it apart in the cause of 'research'. These were simple tunes, simply sung and treating them like the Dead Sea Scrolls does them a disservice and ignores their fundamental purpose.