Sara Martin (born 1884) and Richard M. Jones (born about 1890) copyrighted the song "Late Last Night." The lyrics they submitted to the Library Of Congress had "(The oldest blues in the world)" written at the bottom, and included

"Now come my little pink, come tell me what you think
You're long time making up your mind
I distinctly understand that you love another one
So how can your heart be mine"

and lyrics about taking morphine and, in contrast to when she was a good little girl, having neither dimes nor friends. "Late Last Night" used a simple IV-IV-I-I-V-V-I-I chord progression, a la "The Bucket's Got A Hole In It." If Martin and Jones were right in implying that this was a chord progression used very early on in blues, then the way, say, Bob Pratcher (born about 1893) sang "Got the blues, got the blues, can't be satisfied" in "If It's All Night Long" with a similar progression might represent some of the earliest blues in style. (Folklorist Howard Odum collected the lyrics "I got the blues and can't be satisfied/Brown-skin woman cause of it all/Lawd, Lawd, Lawd" in a three-lines-per-stanza song before 1909.)