Confession: I have never either heard Henry Thomas, nor even heard of him. (Never heard, or heard of, quill playing, either.) I merely deduced from the poster's comments that Mr. Thomas apparently performed with an admirable degree of exuberance, and that his instrumental technique seemed basic enough to be easily learned.

I think this is an admirable approach to learning to play the blues, or indeed any musical form. Find something you like AND that you think you're capable of learning at your current skill level, and have at it. And if your choice is somewhat obscure, so much the better; your listeners will enjoy the privilege of being exposed to something new. (They might even give you credit you don't deserve for writing your own music ~ but that's another topic...)

I've heard plenty of blues and trad-jazz wannabes slavishly imitate recorded masterpieces without communicating the slightest degree of sympathetic feeling or even basic understanding of whatever song they're trying to copy. I don't recommend this approach, and certainly don't enjoy having to sit through such performances.

A particular pet peeve of mine is when the performer consistently drops a couple of beats or a measure at the same point in the song, every time around. These little "wrinkles" are improvised interjections that the original artists used occasionally, even randomly, NOT at the same point of the same verse every time out. When the original artists played and sang these little irregularities, they always did so with some emotional/expressive "meaning": when repeated by rote, as thought they were part of a "composition," they lose all relevance.

Pitheris:

Thanks for the quote-with-compliment. I am truly sorry to be responding back with a quote-with-disagreement: :^)

And you can't seriously put John Hurt, Blind Blake, Bill Broonzy in the same class as Robert Johnson.

Well, it's a matter of personal opinion. I certainly agree that Robert Johnson was a genius, especially when considered in historical context; while strongly influenced by earlier artists (especially Son House), he really did seem to come up with something entirely new, startlingly modern, and (we're told) did so very suddenly and unexpectedly.

I, for one, however, consider John Hurt equally unique and brilliant if not moreso ~ and John lived long enough to be "rediscovered" and thus make homself known to us as a wonderful person as well as a great musical artist. AND, one with a portfolio of original songs and unique reinterpretatoins at least as impressive as RJ's (albeit stylistically quite different), and considerably larger.

Blind Blake and Bill Broonzy were pretty outstanding, too, and I'm sure they have their own adherents/fans to plead their case. Blake ceratinly takes a back seat to no one as an instrumentalist ~ one reason that I'm not a great Blind Blake scholar is that I've never learned to play in his highly demanding style. And Broonzy, while perhaps less of a guitar virtuoso than the others mentioned here, was certainly a great and very influential blues singer and all-around performer and artist.