Great, thanks for this answer, I am clearer now.
A few comments:

“Alec Lee roughly in 1902”: I tend to think Gus Cannon was born around 1888 rather than 1883 (1910, 1930, and a possible 1940 census give him born in 1887, 1888 and 1889 respectively; if Bessie Brown was his first wife, the 1930 census indicates he married her at age 20, which would make him born in 1889; and he would have had obvious incentive to give an earlier birthdate for his 1918 WWI registration, and to later interviewers).

I don’t know that he was found in any 1900 census, and, at any rate, he is not listed as living with his brothers Tom or Louis or Elmore in the Delta at that time. I wasn’t able to find his parents in this census either, neither in Marshall County nor anywhere. He said he arrived in the Delta at age 12, but again, we cannot know how reliable this claim is.

For all these reasons, I feel it is safe to add a few years to his claim that he was taught “Poor Boy” “around 1900, maybe a little bit before.” “How many years” is hard to tell. A full “five years” might be a lot. Yet I can’t come up with a better likely timeframe than “1901-1905,” so, kind of an extended “roughly in 1902.” Besides the above elements, do you have reason to believe that it was close to 1902?

By the way, there are one or two men who could be Alec Lee, living not too far from the Cannon brothers in 1900, but I found no “Lee” or “Lea” with a first name even close to “Alec” who died in Shelby County, Tennessee, in the early twenties, contrary to what Olsson reported, likely informed by Cannon.

“The Tutwiler guitarist in about 1904”: Yes, Handy would have had to have been in the Delta for at least a few months – he arrived there after June 3, 1903 – and it is likely that this Tutwiler encounter happened before “Cleveland / McCoy,” which itself, I will soon argue, likely did not happen after January 1906.

So, “End of 1903 to very beginning of 1906” would be my timeframe, with a focus on “1904-1905.” “About 1904” is obviously fine with me.

“Cleveland was ‘some time between 1905 and 1910’”: We can narrow it down far more imo.

First, it would have happened with Handy’s Clarksdale orchestra – not his Memphis orchestra – if we are to believe Stack Mangham when he claimed he remembered McCoy’s performance, since Mangham was a member of the Clarksdale orchestra, and is not known to have been in any of Handy’s Memphis orchestras, nor to have lived in Memphis at any time. Handy says “[Mangham] remained with the [Clarksdale Planters] bank for the next thirty years.” And Mangham is indeed found at least in 1910, 1916, 1918, 1927, 1930, 1940, etc in Clarksdale.

Secondly, Handy makes it quite clear that he was living in Clarksdale at the time. After witnessing McCoy’s popular, and financial, success, Handy says: “Once the purpose was fixed, I let no grass grow under my feet. I returned to Clarksdale and began immediately to work on this type of music.”

Here are reasons to believe Handy and his family left Clarksdale, to start permanently residing in Memphis, around the end of January or February 1906 – “permanently” as opposed to Handy alone regularly going to Memphis, which he had done for at least some months prior to that:

1/ As noted by Elliott Hurwitt, Handy said in a 1954 interview that “the first night [his] family spent in Memphis was in [Matthew Thornton’s] home,” and, more importantly that “[Handy’s] oldest boy walked his first time in [Thornton’s] home.”

Handy’s oldest son, William was born on August 15, 1904 in Clarksdale. Only a few percent of all children start walking after 18 months, it seems, whereas around 10% still don’t walk at age 17 months, again, “it seems” – having trouble finding reliable and consistent stats on this, strangely. Be that as it may, it is almost certain that William Handy Jr. would have made his first steps, and therefore (if Handy’s claim is correct) that Handy would have settled in Memphis, be it temporarily at Matthew Thornton’s home, by mid-March 1906, on William, Jr.’s “nineteen months” birthday.

2/ Handy is not listed in the 1906 Memphis directory. Contrary to what Hurwitt hypothesizes – hypothesized in 2000, when it would have been way harder to check; Hurwitt is a great source – not only were boarders listed, but no less than five adult boarders (not counting children of course) are listed at Matthew Thornton’s home in 1906, none of whom is Handy.

I lack newspapers issues in Memphis for the year 1906. But inferring things from both the way it happened in Memphis in the 1890’s, and from the way it happened in cities about the size of Memphis in 1906, like Nashville, where the directory was co-published by the publisher of Memphis’ directory, the canvass would last a bit more than two months, after which there was another two months before publication, making the whole process a bit more than four months. The 1906 Memphis directory was published around May 20, 1906. It is very likely the canvass started in or only a few days before January 1906. Had Handy arrived in Memphis after the very last days of 1905, he very likely would have been listed, whereas had he arrived, say, at the end of January or in February 1906, he would have arrived during the canvas but possibly after the canvassers had visited Thornton’s home. This is what I believe happened.

3/ While not stating it clearly, Handy seems to imply that what triggered his leaving Clarksdale for Memphis was a fire at his Clarksdale house, “one cold night in January,” after his son “Bill” had been born, that is, after August 1904, so in January 1905, 1906 or 1907 (since Handy is listed in the 1907 Memphis directory). “1905” and “1907” don’t seem to fit with respectively 2/ and 1/ above.

4/ In a letter to William Grant Still on 11/30/50, Handy mentions the Solvent Savings Bank in Memphis and says “I began in that building when it opened [in] 1907, and remained there as a music teacher, composer, publisher, band leader until 1917.” Handy would not have rented a workplace – which it was, all this time, it was not his home – even at the end of his Clarksdale era, when he would only go to Memphis “twice a week.” That would not make sense. And Handy is incorrect: The Solvent Savings Bank opened in Memphis on June 18, 1906. It is therefore likely that he was residing in Memphis by this time.

5/ Handy sometimes said he had spent two years in Clarksdale, and sometimes three years. Which makes “around two and a half years” a rather likely guess. Since he likely arrived in Clarksdale in mid-1903, adding two and a half years brings us around to early 1906.

6/ Handy mentions playing in Mississippi for the entrance of Earl Brewer’s gubernatorial campaign. It is not crystal clear that this happened with the Clarksdale orchestra, but is still listed with events from the Mississippi years in Handy’s autobiography. Brewer announced he was candidate on or very soon before January 12, 1906. Which would possibly make this engagement one of the very last of Handy’s while he lived in Clarksdale.

To sum it up:
1/ By mid-March 1906
2/ After mid-December 1905
3/ In or soon after “January,” whatever the year
4/ By mid-June 1906
5/ Around early 1906
6/ Possibly after January 12, 1906

So, around February 1906 seems a good target to me.

One thing that long puzzled me was that Handy said: “Then there had been Memphis. We had settled down in time to celebrate the birth of our fourth child, Florence,” which I thought may have implied that they had “settled down” soon before her birth. Florence Handy was likely born between May 15 and June 14, 1907, according to her death certificate. One possibility is that the Handys were indeed boarders at Matthew Thornton’s place for a few months in 1906, and “settled down” at their “own” home (246 Ayers, where they are listed in the 1907 directory), in late 1906, when Handy’s wife was already pregnant with Florence.

Be that as it may, I would stand by “very close to February 1906.”

Back to “Cleveland / McCoy.” Handy helps us furthermore. He says: “Seven years prior to this, while playing a cornet solo, Hartman’s Mia, on the stage in Oakland, California (…)”

The only occasions when Handy could have played in California by this time would have been with Mahara’s Minstrels. Handy was with them from August 1896 to March 1900 and then for one last season from August 1902 to some point in 1903, after June 3.

As it happens, Frank Mahara’s Minstrels did not go to the West Coast at any point during the 1902-1903 season.

If I am not mistaken, and I don’t believe I am, the only times Handy had ever played in Oakland, California, when the “Cleveland / McCoy” event happened, were the following:
- Week starting December 21, 1896, at the Oakland Theater
- Week starting February 28, 1898, at the Oakland Theater
- Week starting January 9, 1899, at the Dewey Opera House

He could have played John Hartmann’s “Mia,” a cornet solo, on any or all of these weeks, since the piece was already reported as being played in the US by May 1894.

However, not only is it obviously safer to take the latest possible date, but it is more than likely that Handy did play “Mia” in Oakland in mid-January 1899, since three weeks after his last show there, it was stated in a Californian report from the Mahara’s Minstrels in the Indianapolis Freeman: “Mr. W. C. Handy, our young band master, is playing ‘Mia’ cornet solo. It has proven to be the ‘real thing’” (02/11/99).

Adding seven years to January 1899 brings us to January 1906.

Finally, it is likely that “Cleveland / McCoy” happened after Tutwiler, which itself happened in late 1903 at the earliest.

From all this, it seems to me that “Cleveland / McCoy” happened:
- At some point between late 1903 and January 1906
- Quite likely at the end of this period, to match the “Mia / Seven years claim,” so, more likely than not between the last months of 1905 and January 1906

What Handy heard in Cleveland:

I guess that by the “don’t allow” section, you mean the verses, that were initially “Mr. Crump don’t allow no easy riders here”? If so, yes, it is indeed close!

And non-blues, I agree.

Yet, in the 1916 article “How I came to write the Memphis Blues,” Handy says of McCoy’s trio: “but how they could play the ‘Blues!’”

So, that is a “maybe.” Agreed.

Peabody: “we don't know whether the lyric with ‘murder’ in it he quoted without music was in a blues or not.” Agreed.

“Three solid Louisiana and two solid Delta”:

Agreed on Cornish and Maggio, which I would date “first half of 1906 at the latest” and 1907, respectively.

I must confess I have more mixed feelings about “Kennedy / Honey Baby” (1904 at the latest, Kennedy seemed to remember).

I do agree that in the last chorus:
- We find the “long distance phone” line which is also found in versions of “Poor Boy,” “KC” and other blues songs, sometimes in an altered way (like e.g., “Long Distance Moan,” by Blind Lemon Jefferson) and which I don’t know was found in non-blues songs
- The lyrics are in AAAB form, set to a 16-bar structure
- The vocal melody in the first four bars has a rather bluesy “contour,” quite reminiscent of “Joe Turner,” imo
- Vocally, the last two bars of each set of four bars are made of a held note or something close, rather evocative of a call-and-response pattern

From a global melodic and harmonic point of view, however, it is not so simple imo.

Even if we skip the (very unbluesy) piano part – which we probably should, since it was likely inferred later from the melody – and try to find a not too unbluesy way to re-harmonize the vocal line, the best I can come up with is either a single Eb major chord all along, or twelve bars of tonic chord, followed by “I V I I.” I certainly cannot find a convincing way to insert a “IV” anywhere from bar 5 to 12.

Even then, the melody is still a bit puzzling to me for a blues, not least, paradoxically, because of its modernity: not only are lines starting on a b7 certainly not common in early collected blues, but if this chorus is a blues, it must be noticed as a very early instance of “blues with a b5” (natural A, in the key of Eb major).

In fact, I fail to totally circumscribe why I am a bit uncomfortable about it being a blues – maybe the piano part biased me forever, though I don’t think so – but I certainly understand such a case can be made, and a very strong one.

Alabama: What I have in mind is “John Lowry Goree / ‘Hear dat whistle when she blow,” which I was made aware of – like so many things, we will never be able to thank you enough! – by one Joseph Scott.