M. Fred McDowell and R. Johnson thread creep, on one recording Fred talks about the origin of the blues, and says the 'blues came from the reel' which strikes me as rather odd as the 12bar pattern is quite different than the 16 bar 4/4 pattern for reels. (of course Id suspect that Ragtime, Minstrel, Gospel etc would be influences but any thoughts on this) I confess I dont know much about the very early blues origins, but would love to find out more. Petr