"Mike Yates wrote an article - Blues Jumped a Rabbit - a couple of years back, which deconstructs the Lomax idea that the Blues began in the Delta."

Or expresses healthy skepticism about it, anyway. Anyone who wants to deconstruct that idea shouldn't bring up the Tutwiler musician (_Father Of The Blues_ p. 74) while not bringing up the similar, years earlier, and more clearly mournful "Got No More Home Than A Dog" (_Father Of The Blues_ p. 142).

Patton's friend Booker Miller recalled Patton telling him that he began playing guitar when he was about 19, which would be in about 1910.

Yates' "We don't know what the [Tutwiler] singer was singing" is inaccurate.

Handy's _Father Of The Blues_ does not claim he heard the Tutwiler musician as early as "1903." Norm Cohen's research has suggested that the individual lyric "Going where the Southern cross the Dog," sung by anyone, logically should probably -- not necessarily in what we'd call a blues song -- predate 1903, because of when various railroad lines were built.

What Yates calls "Rag Ditties" were widely known to black musicians of the times as "reels."

Henry Thomas's "Lovin' Babe" is a variant of the "All Out And Down" that was known to Freeman Stowers, Mance Lipscomb, etc.

Spottswood's theory that blues began in the Piedmont is based on the existence of songs in the Piedmont that were also well known outside the Piedmont.

Black musicians of about 1911 apparently didn't share Spottswood's perception of the 12-bar blues (with e.g. AAB lyrics) as somehow especially "blues" relative to the 16-bar blues (with e.g. AAAB lyrics). Handy popularized the use of 12 bars in blues relative to 16 bars in blues a lot starting in about 1914.

Yates' mention of Max Haynes's article (which is very valuable) is misleading. If Jim Jackson knew both "I'm A Bad Bad Man" and blues songs, and Blind Blake knew both "Champagne Charlie" and blues songs, that does not somehow mean that "I'm A Bad Bad Man" or "Champagne Charlie" was a blues song.

When does Wardlow think Lem Nichols began playing Pearlee?