An easy way to look at some of the early stuff is just to look at the "Joe Turner" and "Poor Boy Long Ways From Home" families, look at what people like Handy, Gus Cannon, Emmet Kennedy, and Roy Carew said about songs like those, and then ask yourself if e.g. Abbott and Seroff have ever come up with any stage performances of blues that early. No they haven't, by years (even though their _Original Blues..._ is misleading on that topic anyway -- their _Ragged But Right_ isn't misleading on that topic, happily). Johnnie Woods in 1910 and Tom Young in 1910 and Kidd Love in 1910 is really interesting (seriously), as is, say, Anthony Maggio in 1908, but the idea that 1910 or 1908 can trump e.g. 1905 is chronologically impossible.