Elijah wrote: "I don't disagree with... the choice of [some] to... describe early songs as blues. I'm just pointing out that they were not called that at the time, and the shift came after the wave of commercial blues hits." The earliest known references to "blues" music, starting in 1909, are from before the wave of commercial blues hits started, in 1912.

"Joseph considers New Orleans musicians to be 'fudging' when they called songs like 'Careless Love' blues...." Actually I was talking about music writers basically fudging.

"Odum himself, in the book he published in 1925 with Guy Johnson, 'The Negro and His Songs,' was still carefully distinguishing that music from 'blues,'..." If you're referring to pp. 149-150, the book doesn't claim that its folk songs "class" (category) doesn't include blues songs. It says that there were "modern... popular 'hits' and 'blues'" that weren't folk songs, which of course was true.

Regarding taxonomies, good-faith _working definitions of blues music_ can differ, can be broader or narrower, and your current answer to

"Elijah, what credible evidence do you have that pop musicians contributed to the invention of blues music? Using any working definition of blues music you like"

is that it's somewhere in Abbott and Seroff? Okay, where? You want your website to say that blues music began as popular music, but you don't want to "make arguments" that that's true, because... there's no actual possible argument that supports that idea, right?

"The short version is: professional musicians have borrowed from non-professionals, and vice-versa, for as long as music has been a profession." In music in general. There are multiple concrete examples we know of of professional musicians learning blues music in particular from folk musicians by 1907, and that corresponds to what people like Perry Bradford recalled had happened; there is no known evidence of any folk musician learning blues music in particular (as opposed to e.g. "I Got Mine") from a professional musician by 1907.

Here's a quote from the experienced and very intelligent blues researcher Pete Lowry: "One ought to immerse one's self in that which is being examined and then winkle out possible generalizations later." Best I can tell, you've never immersed yourself in the blues and blues-related music of before 1912 (nor is it the job of a writer about Robert Johnson to do so, if he can stick to making claims about Robert Johnson's era). That's why you're relying on what you can imagine as true -- i.e., it seems plausible that pro musicians _could_ have helped invent blues music -- as the only substitute you have for giving an argument based on evidence. The reason your website informs people that blues music began as popular music is you can imagine that maybe it did for all you know.