The self taughtness varies with the individual. Most were self taught in the beginning and then persued it. Also exposure to people who could teach varied. The great foundation Delta Blues artist Son House grew up in the church and was part of choirs and had been to singing schools and had been tutored in music by a choir master before he ever took up the blues and learned to play the guitar at the age of 26. Several blues people went to music schools after migrating to the north. Blind Blake shows enormous knowlege.

Lemon Jefferson knew all the musicians in Dallas (and elsewhere) and certainly would have picked up a considerable amount of knowlege. He worked all the joints in Deep Ellum where all the other Dallas musicians worked. We know he was a friend of T-Bone Walker's parents (both pro musicians) and attended the Sunday afternoon jams at the Walker house (where can I get a ticket?).

In contrast MississippiJohn Hurt stayed in and around very rural Avalon and Como Mississippi for almost all of his life and learned things for himself piece by piece, song by song. And he knew all the local good musicians. He had many chord forms and inversions of his own that he made up because they fit what he was doing. In the end, as always, "It's the 'want-to' that counts". The odd positions that can be found in some artists show a lot of self-taughtness, or is it invention?