> "Earlier than that it simply meant 'an incorrect or off-pitch note.'" What's your source for that?

See mine of May 29, 10:15 PM.

I.

Good find of "'Blue' note melody." I suspect it meant "melody based on supposedly incorrect notes that are actually correct here."

That would exemplify the way new word meanings can arise shift from possible ambiguity. Anyone who'd never heard of the earlier kind of "blue note" might easily think that use of the word was narrowly descriptive rather than broadly pejorative.

I've searched a number of vast newspaper databases without finding any earlier references to musical "blues" or blues-type "blue notes." There are a few more places I can look.

OED def.4b of "blue," adj., beginning in the 17th century, seems relevant: "Of a period, event, circumstance, etc.: sad, dismal, unpromising, depressing." It would not take too much of a shift to apply it to a sour note - though that it looks like that shift took a long, long time to appear and catch on, mostly among musicians American popular musicians. (The evidence is spotty.)


II.
Acc. to the Encyclopaedia Britannica: "The rural blues developed in three principal regions, Georgia and the Carolinas, Texas, and Mississippi. The blues of Georgia and the Carolinas is noted for its clarity of enunciation and regularity of rhythm. Influenced by ragtime and white folk music, it is more melodic than the Texas and Mississippi styles."

And those are just the "principal" regions. Nothing there about the Delta as the ultimate source.

Mr Red's fungi analogy is worth keeping in mind, but it seems unlikely to relate the blues. If blues originated at point A, there seems to be no reason why they should disappear from A after spreading to points B-Z. Not that it *couldn't* happen; but there would have to be some special circumstance.

Let's say guitarist Joe Blue invents the blues as we known them in Blue City in 1880. Blue becomes an itinerant musician and travels all over the South. If his music had caught on at home, why would it die out there?

And if it hadn't caught on, saying it "began" in Blue City would pedantically miss the point. The effective point of origin would be the first place where it did catch on on and from which it began to spread, regardless of where it was, strictly speaking, first played.

As for "Blues is jazz." Jazz clarinetist Sidney Bechet (1897-1959, from N.O.) frequently insisted that "Jazz is ragtime."