"It would be interesting to know who these 'normal blues writers' are"

Examples would be anyone who, without reading Gates Thomas himself, passes on David Evans' very exaggerated (relative to other tunes of about the same time) association of "Nobody There" with blues music, or, without reading Charles Peabody himself, passes on the exaggerated myths about Peabody supposedly clearly describing blues music in his article. That sort of thing. (It's interesting to read someone describing Peabody's article, which is often third or fourth hand, and then go read Peabody's article.)

Newman White, e.g., was really smart and into hard data, and had the advantage of us in that he personally, a Southerner, was surrounded by early folk blues. Seems to me that about 5 or 10% of people who have books about blues published have read White. Oliver did, because he really wanted to know what happened whatever it was, which seems to be somewhat rare.