Joseph writes, "Howard Odum documented folk blues sung before 1909." I understand what he means by that sentence: that Howard Odum documented music before 1909 which Joseph defines as blues. I don't disagree with him about that, at all.

However, my perspective includes the fact that Odum himself, in the book he published in 1925 with Guy Johnson, "The Negro and His Songs," was still carefully distinguishing that music from "blues," which they categorized as a modern, commercial style.

Within a few years, Odum and Johnson had changed their minds and had decided that blues was, in some instances, a genuine folk style, closely linked to earlier African American folk music. I don't disagree with that choice, or the choice of Joseph and others to follow this practice and describe early songs as blues. I'm just pointing out that they were not called that at the time, and the shift came after the wave of commercial blues hits.

To me, that does not mean the earlier songs were not "blues," or that they were. It just means that the taxonomy changed between 1900 and 1930, and has kept changing--and I am interested in changes in taxonomy as well as changes in music. The story of how the music we now call blues evolved is a separate question from how the term "blues" evolved, and both are interesting.

As to the role of professional musicians in creating and spreading blues--by any definition--I would refer everyone to Abbott and Seroff's work. Joseph has cited them as authorities and I agree--indeed, I submitted the chapter in "Escaping the Delta" which deals with what I would call pre-blues and early blues to Lynn Abbott for comments and corrections, and followed his guidance.

The short version is: professional musicians have borrowed from non-professionals, and vice-versa, for as long as music has been a profession. At the turn of the century, there were both African American professionals and non-professionals making music all over the southern US. We know almost nothing about most of them, are working with tiny and mostly unrepresentative tips of huge icebergs, and can support all sorts of arguments...if what we want to do is make arguments. I don't. I'm interested in the range of music being made, and when Joseph tells me something about that music that I don't know, I'm grateful to him.