I agree with Muir that the most obvious connection of the blues music of about 1908 to something else earlier is a connection to the bad man ballads. Regarding IV-IV-IV-I vs. IV-IV-I-I in particular (something he and I happen to have been very interested in for years), I think he underestimates -- roughly speaking -- over how long a period both of those chord progressions were found in both non-blues and blues, but if we just accept that
-- IV-IV-I-I and IV-IV-IV-I were both found in bad man ballads and
-- IV-IV-I-I and IV-IV-IV-I were both found in blues (along with e.g. IV-IV-IV-IV in bad man ballads and blues also),
I agree with him that the 12-bar bad man ballads seem to be the closest earlier non-blues link to the blues songs of about 1908.

Something Muir doesn't address IIRC but I think we should is that there seems to have been a transition from a fad (among black folk musicians) for third-person bad man ballads to a fad (among ditto) for first-person bad man ballads, the songs similar to "Hop Joint," to a fad for first-person blues (among ditto). If you research when the songs most similar to "Hop Joint" are from, it's about 1904 era or something like that.

And then imo it's a good idea, looking at all those songs, to look at bragging lyrics vs. vulnerable lyrics, because the bragging lyrics of the first-person bad man songs (in which the first person _was the bad man_) had to give way to more vulnerable lyrics to be typical blues lyrics, and we can find examples of both in the same song that seem to involve that gradual transition. Admitting you have the blues but qualifying that with the claim that you are too mean to cry, e.g., sits on the fence of that bragging-lyrics trend and that vulnerable-lyrics trend.

S. Calt didn't write much worth reading imo but I do like his point that a typical purpose of vulnerable lyrics about e.g. having no mother or sister would be to get money into the hat on the street. (The expression "I got the blues" was extremely well-known in the U.S., e.g. to white people.) I believe there were songs like that continuously during the 1890s to 1910, but also believe that the fads described above ran in that basic order.

I don't understand Hobson's reasoning about plantation vs. train station and supposed credibility.

The Handy piece that was most closely related to the "Yellow Dog" song he heard a guitarist do was his "Yellow Dog Rag" aka "Yellow Dog Blues," a blues; "Memphis Blues" was inspired by the Cleveland, MS band, per Handy's sideman of the time Stack Mangham. (That Handy would do one thing in 1920 and another in 1916 and another in 1914 and another in 1912, in all of those cases drawing on memories of before 1912, the year he turned 39, means little in of itself imo. It's possible that the only part of the "Memphis Blues" tune that Handy heard in Cleveland was the non-blues "mama don't allow"-type part. Also, there's smoke, but not fire that I recall seeing, that Paul Wyer was annoyed that he cowrote "Memphis Blues" and didn't get credit for it. We know Handy used people, because e.g. when Douglas Williams brought "Hooking Cow Blues," lyrics and music, to Handy, it "needed" Handy to add some musical sound effects and become a cowriting credit for Handy, and there's a parallel case to the Williams that Handy did to another black blues songwriter around the same time, I forget who. Jelly Roll Morton claimed that Handy learned "Jogo Blues," which evolved into "St. Louis Blues," from one of Handy's guitarists -- albeit Morton's stories were very often true and very often not true.)

(Hobson) "he claimed in his autobiography that he first heard... in 1903" _Father Of The Blues_ does NOT say he heard the Tutwiler guitarist in 1903.

"Joe Turner" Handy did claim to Scarborough in about 1922 (IIRC a modern-day writer accidentally reassigned the Handy/S. interview from about 1922 to about 1916 and that caught on among some writers) that he'd heard "Joe Turner" thirty years earlier or more, but 1891-1892 is when he was 18-19, and 1891-1892 fits with when Turney had already been doing that job for years (he did it from about 1882 to 1900, contrary to old it-must-have-been-whenever-his-brother-was-governor b.s.ing), and we know three-line stanzas were around in black and white music before Turney got that job.

Handy acknowledged that the British-derived 19th-century folk song "Careless Love" itself wasn't a blues song -- as opposed to the way he rewrote it to incorporate blues material. "Long Gone" isn't a blues either. Most black folk music, "John Henry," "Long Gone," all that kind of stuff, most black folk music out there _wasn't_ blues as of about 1905.

Handy described "Joe Turner" as perhaps the earliest blues song best he could tell, so I think sometimes supposed inconsistencies by Handy are being imagined while not reading him carefully enough. _Father Of The Blues_ makes clear, if you read the whole book, that the Tutwiler song was not the first blues he heard, by years. It uses the Tutwiler song for an epiphany story about realizing black folk music could make good money on stage for the guy who had arrived in Clarksdale hoping to become the black Sousa (and again, really he had used folk music for his band before Clarksdale, as he listed to Melicent Quinn).

Elijah is great on some things, and describing the historical early interrelation of folk blues and stage blues, he certainly was _not_ great at that last time we talked. He likes that modern-day myth that stage musicians helped invent the earliest blues music, the modern-day myth that no one, including him every time I ask him to, can provide ANY credible evidence for.

The Peabody article is worth reading, as is what the Thomas brothers heard by then in Texas, as is the 1903 book by Anne Hobson of Alabama. The reason Hobson and the Thomas brothers have been forgotten relative to mentioning Peabody (even among writers who haven't read his article) is the cherrypicking thing: Peabody was in Mississippi and Hobson and the Thomases weren't.

How bad blues scholarship has generally been can be illustrated with Son House (a great artist): he took up guitar in about 1925, as Son said but people like to not mention, and learned slide from Rube Lacey -- who wasn't from the Delta -- as Son said and people like to not mention, and Son was about 1 year old when Gus Cannon learned "Poor Boy, Long Ways From Home," and about 3 years old when Elbert Bowman heard black construction workers sing a "K.C. Moan" variant, and about 5 years old when Wade Ward first heard "Chilly Winds," and about 6 years old when A. Maggio's band was performing "I Got The Blues" in Louisiana, and 7 when E. Tosso's band in Louisiana was too, and 8 when Johnnie Woods was using a blues on stage in Florida, and people go to Son House's recollections because they want to know how blues music started.