"Mance Lipscomb recalls that Sugar Babe was the first song that he learned to play. This was at the age of 14, which would have been in 1919." He was born in 1895, so it would have been in about 1909.

Mance wasn't always reliable on years, but best I can tell he did remember well about how old he was when he got all excited about playing three songs on the guitar ("Sugar Babe," "All Out And Down," and "Take Me Back"). As Mance pointed out, "All Out And Down" was basically (like the "Poor Boy Long Ways From Home" Gus Cannon said he heard in about 1900 and the "Got No More Home Than A Dog" that W.C. Handy said he heard before 1900) a blues song before anyone he knew was talking about so-called "blues songs" yet. (The earliest known example of anyone talking about "blues" music in Texas is from 1910.) "Sugar Babe" had that three-line-stanza, third-line-is-the-refrain form (e.g. "Railroad Bill," "Hop Joint") that was rampant in folk music in about 1895-1910. "Take Me Back" was well known to folk musicians and was based on an 1898 pop song.