Michael ~ my apologies.

I generally try to focus more on ideas than personalities in these discussions, with the inevitable result that I may occasionally give offense where none was intended.

In the case of that earlier discussion of the two "clean graves" songs, I did indeed read your remark about the "new (and in this case, better) song" in the opposite manner from what I now see that you intended, but I still refrained from going any further with the discussion at the time, because I didn't want to "make it personal" any more than I already had. However, my reaction was pretty strong and stayed alive in the back of my mind, which is why it resurfaced when I was reading this thread.

It looks like we both agree that either the "parlor song" or some "blues version" (either BLJ's song or some earlier variant) could have come first, and that it's interesting to speculate how either one might have served as the source for the other.

(I do encounter people who have no appreciation for understatement in general, and for the subtle read-between-the-lines "folk genius" of The Blues in particular. Seen in the harshest possible light, this attitude can be considered evidence of racism, or at least of an inability to appreciate a less linguistically oriented culture than one's own. I realize that most of those who take this attitiude do so quite innocently; hence my reluctance to have persued that earlier discussion any further than I did.)