Who started the Delta blues myth?

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Charles Wayne
Date: 13 Feb 19 - 01:02 PM

Mr. Scott.....

I'd suggest you learn how to talk to people, instead of using ALL CAPS, "that's a FALSE CLAIM" antics against hard working researchers, insinuating that they had malicious intent.

Take note of the old adage... "we can disagree without being disagreeable" .... and you might get your point across better.

As it is, I have no idea what your point is. I couldn't get past your contempt.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: meself
Date: 13 Feb 19 - 03:05 PM

Out of idle curiosity, I took a quick scroll back through five pages and four years of posts - and in all Joseph Scott's many posts, I couldn't find one in which he said anything in ALL CAPS. Did I miss something?

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Charles Wayne
Date: 13 Feb 19 - 03:33 PM

Yes, you did miss something......Post #1 from Joseph Scott........

"Robert Palmer, the rock writer who decided to write a book about blues -- and it sold and influenced other writers -- wrote that "Blues in the Delta... certainly is the first blues we know much about." That was a FALSE CLAIM when he wrote it."

Just a blatant 'hit-job' on Robert Palmer.... His book may not be perfect, but I doubt he was trying to maliciously make a "FALSE CLAIM", as Scott accuses him.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: Neil D
Date: 13 Feb 19 - 05:36 PM

First of all, I think we sometimes are too narrow in our definition of blues music. I remember having a conversation on the patio of my local watering hole. My friend Joe said "Imagine if the guitar had never been invented. What would we do for blues music?" I said "We'd be playing it on banjos." A guy sitting nearby who had just been onstage singing "Maggie's Farm", chimed in with "There's no banjos in Blues music'" repeating it over and over like some kind of mantra. I could only respond "Well, I know a guy named Gus Cannon who might have something to say about that." You wouldn't think the fife was a blues instrument either, till you heard Otha Turner.

In the same way I wouldn't be too narrow when it comes to where the blues originated. Some people like to see history as specific points in time. These people will tell you that Ike Turner "invented" Rock and Roll or that Buddy Bolden "invented" Jazz. In my mind however, Turner's recording of "Rocket 88" with the Brenston band was the culmination of an evolution over time. Same with Bolden's "Funky Butt." I don't deny the Delta's importance in the development of Blues. It may be the most important springboard for the music's spread and growth into an international popularity, from the '20s on. But as to origins, it seems to pop up simultaneously in many places at approximately the same time: the Tidewater; Northern Missippi hill country; even Southern Indiana. East Texas in particular.

Blues music did indeed evolve from field hands, as well as dockworkers and almost entirely overlooked, black cowboys. East Texas was full of them. As many as one quarter of all cowboys were African-Americans who had a major influence on both blues and country music. Dom Flemons from the Carolina Chocolate Drops recently released an important album called "Black Cowboys" featuring some of this seminal music. Leadbelly himself had been a cowhand in his youth and reflected this in some of his songs. I don't want to overstate this influence, I'm not saying that the first ears to hear Blues music belonged to cattle, bedded down after a day on the trail. I'm just pointing out that the music evolved from many sources in many regions. Someone earlier in the thread mentioned the importance of the railroad in communicating the music from region to region and remember, every cattle drive ended at a railhead.


There are a handful of articles exploring these connections. To read one of the more informative ones type into your search engine: Cowboy Blues: Early Black Music In The West.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 14 Feb 19 - 05:42 PM

"As it is, I have no idea what your point is." Who is to blame for the myth that we have evidence that blues music originated in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta? Short answer: Alan Lomax, it seems.

"trying" straw man, didn't write it
"maliciously" straw man, didn't write it

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 14 Feb 19 - 05:53 PM

Neil, on black cowboys and blues it's worth noting that Floyd Canada (1915 article with tons of blues lyrics he knew) was a cowboy, and that "Goodbye Old Paint" as Jess Morris knew it (learned from black cowboy Charley Willis) was partly AAB and as Harry McClintock, born 1884, knew it was ABB, which is associated with early blues too.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 14 Feb 19 - 08:59 PM

What year did Jimmy Rogers write Mississippi Delta Blues?

Must have been a legend by then.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 15 Feb 19 - 02:45 AM

1933

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: Miles
Date: 31 May 21 - 04:30 AM

Great discussion (the good faith posts, I mean).
A few comments and a few questions (not a native speaker but I'll try):

Like Joseph, I am quite convinced Alan Lomax initiated this claim, and at least do not know of anyone making it before him, let alone anyone this influential.

Also like Joseph, it would seem natural to me that the field recordings A. Lomax had made in the Delta would have played some role in his focusing on this specific area.

By the time A. Lomax first made the "Delta claim" (which, to my knowledge and to Joseph's it seems, would be 1947), he had been to the Delta at least three times (his father, five times): once with his father in August 1933, and twice with others, in the summers of 1941 and 1942. On these last two trips, of course, he had recorded Son House, Muddy Waters and illustrious others. Needless to say, though, that by 1947, none of them was even close to being a "blues legend."

One could also go back to A. Lomax’s epiphany, when John Hammond “put [him] on to Robert Johnson,” – “Johnson’s recordings stood out as the finest examples of the blues along with those of the great Blind Lemon Jefferson in the twenties” – at some point between June 1938 and March 1939, at which time A. Lomax was planning to make an album on Johnson with Hammond, and was urging his father to “investigate one Robert Johnson of Robinsville [sic], Mississippi.”

Why “investigate” Robert Johnson as of March 1939, and why A. Lomax would repeatedly claim he went to the Delta in the early 1940’s “to look for Robert Johnson,” when Hammond had announced Johnson’s death (though dating it inaccurately) by December 13, 1938, is unclear to me. Be that as it may, that Hammond replaced Johnson with Big Bill Broonzy for his historic and historical “From Spirituals to Swing” concert, attended by A. Lomax ten days later, may not have been without consequences on the latter’s then forming blues mythology.

Among other factors that may have contributed to A. Lomax’s “Delta birth claim,” one could think of his self-admitted romantic nature, his general aspirations and political views.

But regarding a more immediate trigger, I find it hard to think that Big Bill Broonzy, and more specifically the conversation that A. Lomax recorded on March 2, 1947 in NYC of Big Bill Broonzy, Memphis Slim and Sonny Boy Williamson (I), could have had nothing to do with A. L’s taking the leap to make the "Delta claim" a few months later, nor with providing support to said claim in the following years. (I now see that Vic Hobson, who often makes good connections, mentions this recording, but he strongly underestimates its impact on A. Lomax, imo, as well as Broonzy’s specific influence. Also, and it might be related, Hobson is factually mistaken about the Common Ground article)

Chronology is not causality, yet, the following seems quite striking to me:

March 1946: An article by Big Bill Broonzy, "Baby, I Done Got Wise," is published in The Jazz Record, in which Broonzy starts to claim that he used to know a "blues singer"/ fiddler in Arkansas, in the 1910’s, known as “See See Rider” because he used to sing the eponym song.

July 1946: Big Bill Broonzy appears for the first time in a People's Songs hootenanny, in NYC.

October 1946: BBB gives Alan Lomax a nine-page handwritten biography in which he again mentions the alleged Arkansas fiddler called “See See Rider.”

November 9, 1946: BBB is for the first time on the bill of a concert organized by A. Lomax (with People's Songs), at Town Hall, NYC - Great success, for the event and for BBB.

March 1, 1947: BBB, Memphis Slim and Sonny Boy Williamson are on the bill of another A. Lomax / People's Songs event in NYC. The same evening, they have dinner and sleep at A. Lomax's place in Greenwich Village.

March 2, 1947: The next day, A. Lomax brings the three musicians to Decca Studios, and records them in what is partly a collective interview, partly a conversation, interspersed with performances. Among other subjects, they evoke the origins of the blues, which they do not say was specifically born in the Delta, though, but more generally "not (…) in the North," "not (…) in the East," but "in the South" and at one point "Down South." On or near this date, Lomax also records BBB alone, for an oral biography.

December 23, 1947:
Folk Song USA, edited by Alan Lomax, is copyrighted. It is specifically in notes to "See See Rider" - the song - that A. Lomax, for the first time, it seems, makes the claim that the blues was born in the Delta. Just a few paragraphs before stating that “See See Rider” is “said to have been composed by an Arkansas Negro in the early part of this century” (cf BBB’s story), Lomax writes: “A folk blues has a simple tune (…). No Tin Pan Alley sharpie had anything to do with this blues, (…). It came out of the great valley of the blues, the Mississippi Delta, where the earth and the people are equally fertile and burdened with troubles.” A few lines later, he concludes a very brief attempt at a history of the blues with “Now this lonesome melody of the Mississippi has uncoiled in the ear of the whole world.”

Incidentally, he also mentions that “[W. C.] Handy, traveling through rural Arkansas, heard this music [the blues],” which, given that Handy almost never mentions Arkansas specifically, much less as a place where he would have first heard blues songs, and given that A. Lomax had likely read both Handy’s Blues: An Anthology (1926) and Handy’s autobiography (1941) by 1947, on top of making a recorded interview of him for the Library of Congress in 1938, seems indicative to me, but some may find it far-fetched, that A. Lomax had clearly decided at this point to prefer Broonzy’s claims over Handy’s, against all common sense. While not stated clearly, it also seems to indicate that Lomax’s conception of the Delta was not so rigorous here as to exclude Arkansas, or at least eastern Arkansas. Could the fact that he conflates the Delta with a “valley” also imply that by 1947, his conception of the “Delta” was even broader than that? Implying that pretty much any place at least two of his new informants, namely BBB and Memphis Slim, would mention, whether in Mississippi or Arkansas, or even maybe West Tennessee could then conveniently be included into this fascinating “Delta” concept?

January and February 1948*: On January 23, A. Lomax and his father meet in the Delta for a recording / common conferences trip. A few hours later, John A. Lomax has a heart attack and dies three days later in Greenville, MS, on the day recordings had been planned at Parchman Farm, the Mississippi State penitentiary. Father and son had made recordings there together, more than 14 years before, during Alan’s first field trip, and John had returned three times in the late 1930’s. After John’s funeral in Austin, TX, Alan comes back to the Delta and makes the planned recordings at Parchman, on February 9, 1948. The idea of this 1948 trip had formed at least by January 1947, likely in John’s mind more than Alan’s, and therefore cannot be – or not totally be – imputed to Parchman and chain gangs being mentioned in the March 2, 1947 conversation. It is likely, however, that Alan had said conversation in mind when making these recordings, which he would use almost ten years later, both as illustrations to the same conversation in the Blues in the Mississippi Night LP, and in a dedicated LP: Negro Prison Songs. (*I have yet to see strong evidence that any Lomax went to the Delta at any time in 1947, let alone in late 1947, as is often claimed. More than unlikely imo. Glad to share evidence if asked)

March 1948: Folk Song USA is published.

Summer 1948:
An article by A. Lomax, “I got the blues,” is published in Common Ground. It is structured around the March 2, 1947 conversation, including many extracts verbatim, but set in East Arkansas, close to Memphis, and not NYC, with a fully invented story about Lomax and the three musicians first meeting in and then being chased from Beale Street (Memphis) that same evening, and with the musicians’ names changed, in order, Lomax would explain, to protect them and their families.

In this article, A. Lomax, once again (contrary to what Hobson strangely claims), in fact three times, makes the claim that the blues was born in the Delta / Mississippi. He first writes: “Child of this fertile Delta land, voice of the voiceless black masses, the blues crept into the back windows of America maybe forty years ago and since then has colored the whole of American popular music.” He then adds, using almost the exact same words as in Folk Song USA: “Now the blues is a big, lonesome wind blowing around the world. Now the whole world can feel, uncoiling in its ear, this somber music of the Mississippi.” The last one: “Here was Natchez [Big Bill Broonzy], who had helped to birth the blues forty years ago in this same Delta country” – that is, as late as 1907 / 1908, at age 3 to 5, when he himself would repeatedly claim the blues existed before he was born (true or invented birthdate).

Finally, regarding BBB and Memphis Slim’s influence on A. Lomax’s claims: after stating that the blues was an evolution from work songs, A. L. writes, “Here, from the experience of Leroy [Memphis Slim] and Natchez [BBB], had come confirmation for my own notions about the origins of the blues.” If Broonzy and Chatman’s “musicological” insights regarding the birth of the blues - however young they were, and no matter that they did not even claim that their stories actually informed the birth of the blues - were so relevant to Lomax, couldn’t it have been that their geographical accounts were also likely to influence him? Not that any of them, ironically, had been born nor raised in the Delta (strict definition) by the way. But their mentioning names like Parchman, or Merigold, or Scott, MS, or the “Loran [Lowrance] brothers’” levee camps “all around Memphis,” or even Arkansas surely must have had some kind of impact – the latter since, here again, A. L. seems to consider at least East Arkansas as part of the Delta (e.g., “Now we sat together in the Delta night”).

1950: Still on A. Lomax’s geographical conception of the Delta, I am not exactly sure what to make of the following in Mister Jelly Roll: A. L. describes New Orleans as “where the Mississippi Delta washes its muddy foot in the blue Gulf.” Isn’t something’s foot part of said thing? Is he here referring to the “Mississippi River Delta,” in which case the “foot” image does not make much sense? Or is there such a thing as a “leg” let’s say, in A. L.’s mind, corresponding to a very broad conception of the Delta, something like a “Natchez – Little Rock – Memphis” triangle, and then South Louisiana that would be a “foot”?

September 21, 1951: While on his first European tour, BBB records “Blues in 1890” in Paris, France, for Vogue. This is the first of several recordings he would make of a half-spoken half-sung version of “Joe Turner,” which, for instance, Abbe Niles says was “quite likely” “the grandfather of (…) all [blues]” in W. C. Handy’s Blues: An Anthology (1926). Handy, who claimed to have heard it in his youth, had performed it for A. Lomax, giving a clear and credible account as to its Tennessean origins during their 1938 recorded interview, consistently with the countless other times he mentioned the song throughout his life. BBB, on the other hand, would connect it to Mississippi in an interview with A. Lomax a few months later, and still later claim it was the first blues he had ever heard.

September 22, 1951: The next day, BBB gives his first two concerts ever in the UK (on the same day), at Kingsway Hall, London. Alan Lomax, then residing in Scotland, comes to London to introduce the evening show, later described as “largely a conversation between old friends, Alan Lomax and Big Bill, with songs from both.” While the attendance is not strong, the press is ecstatic.

September 29, 1951: In a Melody Maker interview, BBB makes the connection between the blues and Mississippi, though not as clearly as A. Lomax would: as for learning the blues, BBB says, “you got to be born a Negro in Mississippi and you got to grow up poor and on the land.” At this point, the only American “guitar / non-jazz” bluesmen to ever have performed in the UK, it seems, were Lead Belly and Josh White, so that BBB’s words seem to have made quite an impression and been taken as valuable testimony. Regarding Arkansas’ association with Mississippi into a great “whole,” again, Broonzy does not claim that Arkansas belongs to the Delta but says “The blues, they’re field hollers way down in Mississippi and Arkansas,” which happens to also be perfectly in line with Lomax’s insistence on the role of hollers and work-songs in the emergence of the blues.

Also, mentioning that early blues songs were not initially called blues, Broonzy adds “That’s one thing Handy’s tellin’ the truth about,” which – besides being a good laugh – is the confirmation of two things imo: that Broonzy was fully aware of Handy’s claims at this point, possibly helped in this by A. Lomax, and that there was a clear, if not wholly explicit, opposition, by then, between two sides of (alleged) “blues witnesses” – the supposedly “authentic” “Big Bill Broonzy and A. Lomax” side, all about rough field work and hollers, and the supposedly “middle-class / Broadway / Tin Pan Alley” side, according to the caricature that was being made of Handy. Handy and Broonzy’s antagonist accounts on the genesis of “Joe Turner,” which Broonzy briefly mentions again in this interview, is a good indicator of this opposition imo – and of who is to be taken seriously.

November 28, 1951: A. Lomax broadcasts parts of the March 2, 1947 conversation in the third episode, “Blues in the Mississippi Night,” of his BBC program, “The Art of the Negro.” According to the manuscripts, in the intro, Lomax says: “The blues is a Mississippi of song that pours out of the central dark valley in America and uncoils in its sadness in the ear of the whole world” - in which we find the same image as in Folk Song USA and the Common Ground article, as well as the fact that Mississippi “Delta” and Mississippi “valley,” are alternatively, if not interchangeably, used by Lomax as the region where the blues was born. He also mentions and broadcasts in the same program “songs of the penitentiary” in “Mississippi,” in other words, Parchman, in connection with the three musicians’ accounts on the “background of the ‘blues.’”

May 13, 1952: Back in Europe, BBB is interviewed by A. Lomax, in Paris, France. He performs “Joe Turner,” after which they evoke the song, which BBB connects to his legendary uncle Jerry (the one still living at age 103 by 1952 but who had been killed by 1947). In this account – one of many contradictory and sometimes self-contradictory accounts by BBB on the song’s genesis, some of which are offered as evidence in many influential blues books, regardless – Big Bill’s mother, it seems, told him that Uncle Jerry used to play the song in 1892, in Mississippi, we infer, since according to BBB, his family was living there at the time. BBB would later “confirm” that he first knew it to have been sung in Mississippi.

In or just before July 1957: A. Lomax releases the LP Blues in the Mississippi Night in the UK, made of extracts of the March 2, 1947 conversation, intertwined with musical sequences, some by the three musicians, some by others, including prisoners recorded at Parchman in 1948. In the liner notes, evoking the blues, Lomax writes: “So in the Yazoo Delta Country, south of Memphis, where the conditions described on this record were typical, there emerged this new dance music, the work of many hands and voices.” Then he proceeds to explain how, according to him, work-songs and hollers evolved to finally become the blues, and adds: “But it must be remembered that all these blues were for dancing.” Of the record, he says: “This, then is the story of the blues told by men who have lived the blues and created the blues.” While none of them, obviously, “created the blues,” stating so regardless, in addition to overstating these men’s connection to the Delta – especially when defined as strictly as above, surprisingly – certainly did its share to spread the Delta birth theory.

October 1957: A. Lomax releases the LP Negro Prison Songs from the Mississippi State Penitentiary in the US and the UK (where it is titled Murderer’s Home), documenting the Parchman recordings of February 1948. In the liner notes, he writes: “Here is the dark, fertile soil which gave rise to the blues. Indeed, this recording, made in the heart of the Mississippi Delta where the blues took shape at the turn of the century, provides the background for America’s most important song-form.”

May 1959: Blues in the Mississippi Night is released in the US.

(Many BBB facts listed above can be found in Bob Riesman’s seriously sourced BBB biography: I Feel So Good: The Life and Times of Big Bill Broonzy. Will gladly give sources for other facts if asked, this post is already long).

Six months later, two books are published almost simultaneously (Nov. and Dec. 59, respectively): The Country Blues by Sam Charters and Jazz, a collection of essays, edited by Nat Hentoff and Albert McCarthy.

In the (obviously very influential) former, as mentioned by Joseph, Charters strongly reenforces the Delta birth claim, while in the latter, Paul Oliver, in his essay "Blues to drive the blues away" is far more cautious and while acknowledging that among states where the blues might have been born, “Mississippi is perhaps most frequently cited,” suggests polygenesis as a strong possibility – not a very reasonable theory either, imo, but at least not subjected to Lomax’s claim.

Which brings me to my questions:

How do you feel both mainstream and “scholar” adhesion to the “Delta claim” evolved over time?

I have a general feeling, but did not investigate this and might be totally wrong, that the claim’s popularity grew from 1947 on, to reach a climax between the late 50’s and the late 60’s, let’s say, even in supposedly “informed” circles, and that while Lomax and Charters never ceased promoting it and mainstream publications kept capitalizing on a selling concept, it still slowly declined ever since, as shown imo in Paul Oliver’s Story of the Blues (1969), Jeff Todd Titon’s Early Downhome Blues (1977), David Evans’ Big Road Blues (1982) etc.

Also, I would tend to judge Oliver a bit less severely than you do on the matter, Joseph. I hear you on “axiomatic” – Charley Patton was certainly axiomatic of Charley Patton – but among post-1947 influential authors, it seems to me that Oliver did much to (politely) reject the idea that there was evidence for the Delta claim.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: Lighter
Date: 31 May 21 - 07:06 AM

What an informative posting, Miles! Thank you.

It's hard to believe that AL didn't know what the "Mississippi Delta" was. Without putting too fine a point on it, some of the texts and even some documentation in his Folk Songs of North America (1965) suggest to me that he wasn't as wed to absolute accuracy as academic standards would now require.

Because the Mississippi is the major waterway of the South, it certainly makes sense that river traffic played a significant role in spreading the blues, especially if its origin was in a city like Memphis or Vicksburg (or even St. Louis).

Influenced by unreliable or (necessarily) partially informed sources sources (who provided the only evidence he had), and by his personal experiences in the Delta, AL might easily have jumped to the conclusion that the Delta was the birthplace - especially since blues were very widely played there. And the phrase "the Delta" is so much punchier and more colorful than "somewhere in the lower Mississippi Valley."

That overconfidence would also give him the satisfaction of making a significant ethnomusicological discovery.

And let's face it, probably no one knew more about "blues history" in the 1950s than AL.

It may be impossible to determine with any precision just where or when the blues originated, because the evidence is necessarily scanty. To say, for example that the blues was known in Arkansas before 1910 and maybe existed by 1895, isn't saying much.

Nor is the issue isn't helped by the fact that, except for spirituals and the occasional banjo/fiddle tune, African-American musical culture was of little interest to the wider world in the nineteenth century.

Absence of evidence here is not evidence of absence - because before Lomax, virtually nobody was looking for the evidence.

And once "born" or "invented," how long the blues might have taken to spread and become a "genre" is likely unknowable. There are simply no records.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: meself
Date: 31 May 21 - 10:40 AM

'And once "born" or "invented," how long the blues might have taken to spread and become a "genre" is likely unknowable.'

All it takes is one influential creative(genius?) musician to come up with an innovation and another influential musician - or the same one - to take it a few hundred miles away - which can happen in weeks - and after fifty years, it's going to be pretty hard to pin down its place of origin.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: Lighter
Date: 31 May 21 - 01:43 PM

It could have happened in weeks.

Or it could have taken decades.

I suspect it was an evolution, not an invention.

People have pointed to a widely sung folksong, "Pretty Polly," as exemplifying the form, if not the scale or lyrical subject matter, in white tradition.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: Lighter
Date: 31 May 21 - 01:45 PM

Consider Gibb's discoveries about the evolution of chanteys.

The genre might have been "invented" by a shipboard genius, but it clearly evolved instead over many years.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: Brian Peters
Date: 01 Jun 21 - 08:50 AM

'People have pointed to a widely sung folksong, "Pretty Polly," as exemplifying the form, if not the scale or lyrical subject matter, in white tradition.'

I'm interested in the history of 'Pretty Polly', and in particular its evolution from the English broadside ballad 'The Gosport Tragedy' / 'Cruel Ship's Carpenter'. Sharp collected the song in both its archaic and more modern form during 1916-18, and my impression is that it was usually younger people who sang the 'Pretty Polly' version, possibly because it was new and fashionable. Josiah Combs wrote in 1925:

'One of the best examples of the harrowing of the folk-song in the hands of the banjo picker is ‘The Gosport Tragedy’, commonly known as ‘Pretty Polly’. The traditional airs of this song are strangely beautiful, but are hardly to be recognized when played on the banjo.'

Combs put the transformation of the song down to its adaptation for the banjo, but that alone would not explain its transformation from a standard 4-line stanza folk song to the AAAB and AAB versions that superseded it. Which makes me wonder - is it possible that the change of form was brought about by African-American musicians, and are there any examples of members of that community having sung it?

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: Miles
Date: 01 Jun 21 - 01:48 PM

Hi Lighter,

Thanks for the kind words,

“It’s hard to believe that AL didn’t know what the ‘Mississippi Delta’ was.” I believe that on this matter like on many others, he “knew,” and then sometimes “forgot,” and then sometimes “remembered” an altered or blurry version of the original thing, depending on what exactly he was writing, how nice it would sound, how helpful it was to the point he was trying to make; all of this without very consciously crossing the borders of honesty, I would guess. It seems established to me that he was, and aimed to be, a storyteller more than a true historian, sometimes proceeding with blues history the way folk musicians proceed with folk songs.

In his defense, one could hardly say that the “Mississippi Delta” has always been, or is even today, an absolutely consensual concept, as this thread shows. Besides the obvious “Yazoo-Mississippi Delta” vs “Mississippi River Delta” confusion, there have been other conceptions.

In 1846, the Vicksburg Daily Whig (Vicksburg, MS) would state that “the Delta of the Mississippi River extends from the Balize [present day Redfish Bay, LA] to near Cape Girardeau [MO],” encompassing a huge tract of land, of about six times the size of the “Yazoo-Mississippi Delta” as it is roughly understood today. Such a conception is still found in newspapers, well into the 1880’s, sometimes even in the 1910’s.

On the other hand, as early as 1880, such a northern newspaper as the Chicago Tribune (10/23/1880 p. 16) describes the “Mississippi Delta” as “that large section of Mississippi lying between the river and the range of hills, or ‘high lands,’ running south from the line of Tennessee, near the centre of the State, and cropping out at a point in the bluffs at Vicksburg,” adding that “it comprises the ‘low lands’ bordering the Mississippi, the Big and the Little Sunflower, the Black, and the Yazoo Rivers,” that is, roughly the definition one would give of the “Yazoo-Mississippi Delta” today.

If we skip to an era A. Lomax would have known, a 1940 article locates Blytheville, Arkansas in the “Mississippi river delta,” and describes Mississippi county, Arkansas, as having “the richest soil of the Delta.” In another one, the same year: “the real remains of both men lie on the Mississippi delta, 25 miles south of New Orleans.” Another one: “a government drainage project on the Mississippi river delta below Memphis, Tenn.” A trifle confusing imo.

But yes, at least sometimes, A. Lomax knew “the Mississippi Delta” to be what we call so today:

Vic Hobson, for instance, quotes correspondence between A. Lomax and Charles Johnson of Fisk University, in early 1941. Both of them seem at least clear at this point that the southwestern Tennessee counties of Shelby (that is, Memphis’ county), Fayette and Haywood do not belong to the Delta, while northwestern Mississippi counties, such as Coahoma and Bolivar, do.

When A. Lomax mentions the “Yazoo Delta Country, south of Memphis” in liner notes, in 1957, it is likely that he refers to our roughly consensual definition of the Delta.

When he mentions that Parchman is “in the heart of the Mississippi Delta,” in other liner notes the same year, and Parchman happens to be right at the center of what we call the Delta today, I believe he and we are talking about the same thing.

And yet, sometimes in his writings, (at least east) Arkansas belongs to the Delta, which I find convenient since many Big Bill Broonzy and Memphis Slim stories happen in Arkansas.

And yet, sometimes the Delta is a “great valley.”

And yet, I fail to feel 100% sure that when A. L. describes New Orleans as “where the Mississippi Delta washes its muddy foot,” he only refers to the “Mississippi River Delta,” as we conceive it today, that is, the mouth of the river, south of Baton Rouge, and not to a very broad conception of the “Delta.”

What I am trying to say is not that A. Lomax did not know what the “strictest definition” of the (Yazoo-Mississippi) Delta was. What I am trying to say is that he did not mind using events or stories happening outside of these strict boundaries as general support that the blues was born “in the Delta” (vague definition) (and sometimes stricter definition), which is ironic since none of said events or stories were actually evidence that the blues started anywhere anyway.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: Lighter
Date: 01 Jun 21 - 02:40 PM

Miles, exactly.

Great research.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: DonMeixner
Date: 02 Jun 21 - 10:02 AM

I don't know much about the blues other than there are many varieties. Mississippi John is probably my favorite of the many styles. It connects with my ear quite well and affects they way I play when just sitting around. I remember sitting in the Expensive Guitar room at The Guitar Center in Syracuse, NY just noodling while my wife shopped next door. The store manager stuck his head in and after awhile said "We don't hear much Piedmont around here." I hadn't a clue what he was talking about. It is a genre I need to look into further.

Don

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 02 Jun 21 - 02:56 PM

"probably no one knew more about 'blues history' in the 1950s than AL" W.C. Handy was far more reliable on early blues history than AL was and he granted interviews for decades and put out books.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: Miles
Date: 03 Jun 21 - 10:37 AM

And his being 12 years older than Jelly Roll Morton (in fact 17 years), 20 years older than Broonzy (in fact 30 years), and about 40 years older than Memphis Slim, seems to have somehow made him a less exciting informant to A. Lomax than said others, instead of more.

Handy’s being articulate, well-spoken, consistent, and making reasonable claims 99% of the time seems to have bored A. Lomax to death, when the latter would avidly listen to, and quote, and broadcast, and release the recordings of Morton and Broonzy’s stories, some of which he knew to be utter nonsense, regardless.

In his first letter to John Hammond in June 1938, A. Lomax writes: “[Morton], himself, is extremely bitter because of the neglect he suffered for a number of years and tends to run down other musicians and boast of his own achievements more than is fair to either, I suspect.” Morton had indeed fiercely “ran down” Handy in the press, soon before.

A BBC listener in 1951 would have first heard a recording of Big Bill Broonzy telling an insane story, and then A. Lomax commenting: “What is there to do but laugh, for Bill has now passed beyond the region of fact into the tall story, onto the big lie (…), onto the satire (…).” A record buyer in the late 1950’s would have heard the same story, listening to Blues in the Mississippi Night, and seen it transcribed in the liner notes, but without AL’s comments in either case.

He was a storyteller.

One could argue that he did not make that very clear (at all), that he used the authority (and funds) of a historian to make the claims of a novelist, and yet I fail to dislike him completely, even for doing that.

And I think it is partly because he does not write like a historian. My thought would broadly be: “How could one not see that these are the words of a poet, a lover, an advocate?”

But then, it would be easy for me to think that, now that we know so much more.

Also, due to my not being an American citizen in the 1940’s, he did not use my funds to do that.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 10 Jun 21 - 05:55 PM

I'll take Morton over Broonzy as an informant. Roughly half of Morton's stories check out when treated as leads, whereas I don't recall ever learning anything from Broonzy other than that "See See Rider" was around before 1920, which we know from other sources anyway.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: Miles
Date: 11 Jun 21 - 07:50 PM

Yes, it is not even close, I agree (based on my limited investigation of Morton, likely a fraction of yours, I fear).

What they do share, however, with many other musicians who gave inaccurate birthdates, is chronological unreliability, obviously.

And what Morton, in his “bad half,” shares with some of said musicians, and others, is an acute “I created Jazz” syndrome. With a “My friends and I actually composed such and such famous song, and we were ripped off” complication.

One might argue, as Morton did, that Handy himself accepted the rather ambiguous “Father of the blues” title, but Handy literally spent decades explaining that the genre he popularized was the “polished” version of a pre-existing form.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: Miles
Date: 02 Jul 21 - 10:07 AM

Joseph, re-reading your initial post, something is puzzling me:

“Ted Gioia, who is primarily known for his books about jazz, wrote in his 2009 blues book, ‘the Delta's claim as [the blues'] birthplace is as strong as any other region's.’ Oh, is it, if Emmet Kennedy, Willie Cornish, and Antonio Maggio all said they had (independently) encountered three blues tunes in Louisiana before 1908?”

Why single out these three examples from Louisiana, when you seem to consider blues at least as many pieces of evidence in the Delta from around the exact same time, or sometimes maybe earlier, like “Handy / Tutwiler,” “Handy / Cleveland,” and “Gus Cannon / “Poor Boy” / Alec Lee,” for example?

And besides the (not self-evident) argument that three accounts from three witnesses for one given place are more compelling than one, do you feel there is a reason to prefer these Louisiana examples to contemporary or sometimes far earlier accounts, in Indiana, Alabama, Tennessee etc, which, again, you seem to consider blues?

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 02 Jul 21 - 07:19 PM

Thanks for asking, I love this stuff.

"you seem to consider blues at least as many pieces of evidence in the Delta from around the exact same time..." The Delta has Alec Lee in roughly 1902 and the Tutwiler guitarist in about 1904. Cleveland (MS) was "some time between 1905 and 1910" per a 1924 article based on an interview with Handy. Unfortunately we don't know what Handy heard in Cleveland, which might well have been the non-blues "don't allow" section of "Memphis Blues," given that an unpublished manuscript by Handy mentions, "McCoy [the guy whose band he heard in Cleveland] used to play a piece called: 'I’m A Winding Ball And I Don’t Deny My Name,'" a related song to the "don't allow" song. Charles Peabody was 1901-1902 and we don't know whether the lyric with "murder" in it he quoted without music was in a blues or not, since many lines were used in both non-blues and blues songs. And I think that's it for evidence of blues in the Delta before 1912, two solid and two maybes.

No, I don't somehow "prefer" the Louisiana examples to earlier examples such as "Got No More Home Than A Dog" in Indiana before 1900. But for the 1900-1909 period, for what's that worth (and the Delta has none from the 1890s) I count three solid Louisiana, two solid Delta.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 02 Jul 21 - 08:53 PM

Miles, what do you have in mind for Alabama?

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: Miles
Date: 03 Jul 21 - 04:51 PM

Great, thanks for this answer, I am clearer now.
A few comments:

“Alec Lee roughly in 1902”: I tend to think Gus Cannon was born around 1888 rather than 1883 (1910, 1930, and a possible 1940 census give him born in 1887, 1888 and 1889 respectively; if Bessie Brown was his first wife, the 1930 census indicates he married her at age 20, which would make him born in 1889; and he would have had obvious incentive to give an earlier birthdate for his 1918 WWI registration, and to later interviewers).

I don’t know that he was found in any 1900 census, and, at any rate, he is not listed as living with his brothers Tom or Louis or Elmore in the Delta at that time. I wasn’t able to find his parents in this census either, neither in Marshall County nor anywhere. He said he arrived in the Delta at age 12, but again, we cannot know how reliable this claim is.

For all these reasons, I feel it is safe to add a few years to his claim that he was taught “Poor Boy” “around 1900, maybe a little bit before.” “How many years” is hard to tell. A full “five years” might be a lot. Yet I can’t come up with a better likely timeframe than “1901-1905,” so, kind of an extended “roughly in 1902.” Besides the above elements, do you have reason to believe that it was close to 1902?

By the way, there are one or two men who could be Alec Lee, living not too far from the Cannon brothers in 1900, but I found no “Lee” or “Lea” with a first name even close to “Alec” who died in Shelby County, Tennessee, in the early twenties, contrary to what Olsson reported, likely informed by Cannon.

“The Tutwiler guitarist in about 1904”: Yes, Handy would have had to have been in the Delta for at least a few months – he arrived there after June 3, 1903 – and it is likely that this Tutwiler encounter happened before “Cleveland / McCoy,” which itself, I will soon argue, likely did not happen after January 1906.

So, “End of 1903 to very beginning of 1906” would be my timeframe, with a focus on “1904-1905.” “About 1904” is obviously fine with me.

“Cleveland was ‘some time between 1905 and 1910’”: We can narrow it down far more imo.

First, it would have happened with Handy’s Clarksdale orchestra – not his Memphis orchestra – if we are to believe Stack Mangham when he claimed he remembered McCoy’s performance, since Mangham was a member of the Clarksdale orchestra, and is not known to have been in any of Handy’s Memphis orchestras, nor to have lived in Memphis at any time. Handy says “[Mangham] remained with the [Clarksdale Planters] bank for the next thirty years.” And Mangham is indeed found at least in 1910, 1916, 1918, 1927, 1930, 1940, etc in Clarksdale.

Secondly, Handy makes it quite clear that he was living in Clarksdale at the time. After witnessing McCoy’s popular, and financial, success, Handy says: “Once the purpose was fixed, I let no grass grow under my feet. I returned to Clarksdale and began immediately to work on this type of music.”

Here are reasons to believe Handy and his family left Clarksdale, to start permanently residing in Memphis, around the end of January or February 1906 – “permanently” as opposed to Handy alone regularly going to Memphis, which he had done for at least some months prior to that:

1/ As noted by Elliott Hurwitt, Handy said in a 1954 interview that “the first night [his] family spent in Memphis was in [Matthew Thornton’s] home,” and, more importantly that “[Handy’s] oldest boy walked his first time in [Thornton’s] home.”

Handy’s oldest son, William was born on August 15, 1904 in Clarksdale. Only a few percent of all children start walking after 18 months, it seems, whereas around 10% still don’t walk at age 17 months, again, “it seems” – having trouble finding reliable and consistent stats on this, strangely. Be that as it may, it is almost certain that William Handy Jr. would have made his first steps, and therefore (if Handy’s claim is correct) that Handy would have settled in Memphis, be it temporarily at Matthew Thornton’s home, by mid-March 1906, on William, Jr.’s “nineteen months” birthday.

2/ Handy is not listed in the 1906 Memphis directory. Contrary to what Hurwitt hypothesizes – hypothesized in 2000, when it would have been way harder to check; Hurwitt is a great source – not only were boarders listed, but no less than five adult boarders (not counting children of course) are listed at Matthew Thornton’s home in 1906, none of whom is Handy.

I lack newspapers issues in Memphis for the year 1906. But inferring things from both the way it happened in Memphis in the 1890’s, and from the way it happened in cities about the size of Memphis in 1906, like Nashville, where the directory was co-published by the publisher of Memphis’ directory, the canvass would last a bit more than two months, after which there was another two months before publication, making the whole process a bit more than four months. The 1906 Memphis directory was published around May 20, 1906. It is very likely the canvass started in or only a few days before January 1906. Had Handy arrived in Memphis after the very last days of 1905, he very likely would have been listed, whereas had he arrived, say, at the end of January or in February 1906, he would have arrived during the canvas but possibly after the canvassers had visited Thornton’s home. This is what I believe happened.

3/ While not stating it clearly, Handy seems to imply that what triggered his leaving Clarksdale for Memphis was a fire at his Clarksdale house, “one cold night in January,” after his son “Bill” had been born, that is, after August 1904, so in January 1905, 1906 or 1907 (since Handy is listed in the 1907 Memphis directory). “1905” and “1907” don’t seem to fit with respectively 2/ and 1/ above.

4/ In a letter to William Grant Still on 11/30/50, Handy mentions the Solvent Savings Bank in Memphis and says “I began in that building when it opened [in] 1907, and remained there as a music teacher, composer, publisher, band leader until 1917.” Handy would not have rented a workplace – which it was, all this time, it was not his home – even at the end of his Clarksdale era, when he would only go to Memphis “twice a week.” That would not make sense. And Handy is incorrect: The Solvent Savings Bank opened in Memphis on June 18, 1906. It is therefore likely that he was residing in Memphis by this time.

5/ Handy sometimes said he had spent two years in Clarksdale, and sometimes three years. Which makes “around two and a half years” a rather likely guess. Since he likely arrived in Clarksdale in mid-1903, adding two and a half years brings us around to early 1906.

6/ Handy mentions playing in Mississippi for the entrance of Earl Brewer’s gubernatorial campaign. It is not crystal clear that this happened with the Clarksdale orchestra, but is still listed with events from the Mississippi years in Handy’s autobiography. Brewer announced he was candidate on or very soon before January 12, 1906. Which would possibly make this engagement one of the very last of Handy’s while he lived in Clarksdale.

To sum it up:
1/ By mid-March 1906
2/ After mid-December 1905
3/ In or soon after “January,” whatever the year
4/ By mid-June 1906
5/ Around early 1906
6/ Possibly after January 12, 1906

So, around February 1906 seems a good target to me.

One thing that long puzzled me was that Handy said: “Then there had been Memphis. We had settled down in time to celebrate the birth of our fourth child, Florence,” which I thought may have implied that they had “settled down” soon before her birth. Florence Handy was likely born between May 15 and June 14, 1907, according to her death certificate. One possibility is that the Handys were indeed boarders at Matthew Thornton’s place for a few months in 1906, and “settled down” at their “own” home (246 Ayers, where they are listed in the 1907 directory), in late 1906, when Handy’s wife was already pregnant with Florence.

Be that as it may, I would stand by “very close to February 1906.”

Back to “Cleveland / McCoy.” Handy helps us furthermore. He says: “Seven years prior to this, while playing a cornet solo, Hartman’s Mia, on the stage in Oakland, California (…)”

The only occasions when Handy could have played in California by this time would have been with Mahara’s Minstrels. Handy was with them from August 1896 to March 1900 and then for one last season from August 1902 to some point in 1903, after June 3.

As it happens, Frank Mahara’s Minstrels did not go to the West Coast at any point during the 1902-1903 season.

If I am not mistaken, and I don’t believe I am, the only times Handy had ever played in Oakland, California, when the “Cleveland / McCoy” event happened, were the following:
- Week starting December 21, 1896, at the Oakland Theater
- Week starting February 28, 1898, at the Oakland Theater
- Week starting January 9, 1899, at the Dewey Opera House

He could have played John Hartmann’s “Mia,” a cornet solo, on any or all of these weeks, since the piece was already reported as being played in the US by May 1894.

However, not only is it obviously safer to take the latest possible date, but it is more than likely that Handy did play “Mia” in Oakland in mid-January 1899, since three weeks after his last show there, it was stated in a Californian report from the Mahara’s Minstrels in the Indianapolis Freeman: “Mr. W. C. Handy, our young band master, is playing ‘Mia’ cornet solo. It has proven to be the ‘real thing’” (02/11/99).

Adding seven years to January 1899 brings us to January 1906.

Finally, it is likely that “Cleveland / McCoy” happened after Tutwiler, which itself happened in late 1903 at the earliest.

From all this, it seems to me that “Cleveland / McCoy” happened:
- At some point between late 1903 and January 1906
- Quite likely at the end of this period, to match the “Mia / Seven years claim,” so, more likely than not between the last months of 1905 and January 1906

What Handy heard in Cleveland:

I guess that by the “don’t allow” section, you mean the verses, that were initially “Mr. Crump don’t allow no easy riders here”? If so, yes, it is indeed close!

And non-blues, I agree.

Yet, in the 1916 article “How I came to write the Memphis Blues,” Handy says of McCoy’s trio: “but how they could play the ‘Blues!’”

So, that is a “maybe.” Agreed.

Peabody: “we don't know whether the lyric with ‘murder’ in it he quoted without music was in a blues or not.” Agreed.

“Three solid Louisiana and two solid Delta”:

Agreed on Cornish and Maggio, which I would date “first half of 1906 at the latest” and 1907, respectively.

I must confess I have more mixed feelings about “Kennedy / Honey Baby” (1904 at the latest, Kennedy seemed to remember).

I do agree that in the last chorus:
- We find the “long distance phone” line which is also found in versions of “Poor Boy,” “KC” and other blues songs, sometimes in an altered way (like e.g., “Long Distance Moan,” by Blind Lemon Jefferson) and which I don’t know was found in non-blues songs
- The lyrics are in AAAB form, set to a 16-bar structure
- The vocal melody in the first four bars has a rather bluesy “contour,” quite reminiscent of “Joe Turner,” imo
- Vocally, the last two bars of each set of four bars are made of a held note or something close, rather evocative of a call-and-response pattern

From a global melodic and harmonic point of view, however, it is not so simple imo.

Even if we skip the (very unbluesy) piano part – which we probably should, since it was likely inferred later from the melody – and try to find a not too unbluesy way to re-harmonize the vocal line, the best I can come up with is either a single Eb major chord all along, or twelve bars of tonic chord, followed by “I V I I.” I certainly cannot find a convincing way to insert a “IV” anywhere from bar 5 to 12.

Even then, the melody is still a bit puzzling to me for a blues, not least, paradoxically, because of its modernity: not only are lines starting on a b7 certainly not common in early collected blues, but if this chorus is a blues, it must be noticed as a very early instance of “blues with a b5” (natural A, in the key of Eb major).

In fact, I fail to totally circumscribe why I am a bit uncomfortable about it being a blues – maybe the piano part biased me forever, though I don’t think so – but I certainly understand such a case can be made, and a very strong one.

Alabama: What I have in mind is “John Lowry Goree / ‘Hear dat whistle when she blow,” which I was made aware of – like so many things, we will never be able to thank you enough! – by one Joseph Scott.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 03 Jul 21 - 08:04 PM

Great stuff!

"Besides the above elements, do you have reason to believe that it was close to 1902?" I believe it was roughly 1902 because he said it was about 1900 and he also learned a song about the Roosevelt/Washington dinner, which was in late 1901, from Lee.

My view with Kennedy is that he obviously encountered a blues song and his relative inability to remember/understand it authentically is irrelevant to the fact that he encountered it, which is evidence of its presence in LA at the time. Single major chord throughout or absence of IV or use of I-V-I-I at the end shouldn't be concerns anyway as these were all found in folk blues.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: Miles
Date: 04 Jul 21 - 06:46 PM

Thanks!

“Single major chord throughout or absence of IV or use of I-V-I-I at the end shouldn't be concerns anyway as these were all found in folk blues.” Sure. I should have made clearer that I don’t believe such a progression prevents it per se from being a blues.

And when added to “Long distance phone” + 16-bar/AAAB + Call-and-response pattern + Rather “folk blues oriented” first four bars, I agree that we have more than is usually required to call a song a blues.

What puzzles me with the “single major chord throughout” thing – I may be getting ahead of myself here, it would require a serious listening session – is the following: it seems to me that most of the time, early “single major chord throughout” blues songs could be set to roughly “I I I I IV IV I I (IV IV I I) V V I I,” so much so that one often hears the latter progression, when listening to a “single major chord throughout,” although said progression is obviously not there. Here, it is impossible. Which would make it a bit unusual, I guess, in this regard.

“his relative inability to remember”: if Kennedy, and his four informants, are wrong about what the melody (usually / roughly) was – about the “spirit” of the melody, let’s say – or if Kennedy chose to alter it for any reason, then, yes, my points don’t hold.

But I tend to believe that if he took the pain to write these accidentals, these multiple b7’s and b5, where 6’s and a 5 would have been just fine, saying, “I arrived to a version very close to the original,” then these specific notes must have been there for a reason.

If indeed, what is printed in Mellows is close to what Kennedy used to hear by 1904, among the elements that I find unusual melodically for an early folk blues, in addition to the aforementioned “lines starting with b7” and “presence of b5,” which, again, make the melody quite modern and very “modal,” I would say, I forgot to mention “total absence of b3.”

Is all of this enough to raise a doubt that Kennedy and/or his informants may actually have heard this chorus harmonized (a guitar or piano player, a barbershop configuration etc), once or more, in the very non-blues way given by Kennedy (where b5 is perfectly consonant)? Or that the melody here printed is the mix of slightly distinct melodies some of which would have pushed the song further toward Kennedy’s harmonic progression? Rather than Kennedy not “understand[ing] the song authentically"? Probably not.

Again, I agree that the case that this is a blues is very strong. And my (slight) reluctance is more a “listening feeling” than really strongly rational.

Which is why I “confessed” it.

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Mike
Date: 07 Jul 21 - 08:47 AM

I thought that it was Ruttling Orange Peel?

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 07 Jul 21 - 10:59 AM

Who started the "blues with your teeth out" movement??

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,NaplesMan
Date: 05 Aug 23 - 05:14 AM

Mack McCormick one of our recent great blues researchers said the blues originated from either the Delta, East Texas or Georgia / Florida area. I think that is good enough for me.

I have seen Joseph Scott debate comments on YouTube song posts. Joseph either write your own book or chill. Bring the smartest in the room is never a good quality. Reminds me of Stephan Cait’s writing in the Patton book… thank god for Wardlow.p

Subject: RE: Who started the Delta blues myth?
From: GUEST,Frank Hamilton
Date: 05 Aug 23 - 08:05 PM

The blues players were travelers. It's unprovable where it started. It was an extension
of field hollers and work songs. The twelve bar blues may have started in the Delta
or other places. A field holler can be structured as an AAB form, the first line
repeated than concluded on the third line. The blues scale was probably originally
based on an African mode or scale untempered. The flatted third, fifth and seventh notes of the Euro-based scale were not exactly tempered. The flatted seventh, if you listen closely is slightly flat of the flatted seventh European scale.

I think the 12 bar blues was probably standardized in the repertoire of New Orleans jazz
musicians.

The Delta undoubtedly generated a blues style as did the Piedmont style in N.C.

I think there was an interaction between the blues performers and the New Orleans
Jazz. There was ragtime before what was called jass materialized.

Field hollers were not restricted to any place in the South geographically.

Alan was influential in his take on the blues but he was not a musicologist.
He didn't have the theoretical musical chops.

The Delta may or may not have started the blues as it became recordings and sold.
It's significant that the African-American modal pattern emanating from West Africa
has found it's way into a variety of hybridized music, some of it mixing Euro and Afro
musical styles. I submit that two of the greatest blues musicians were Charlie Parker
and Wes Montgomery whose playing is rooted in the blues.

The question remains, in what form are we referring to when we speak of the blues?
There are hollers, moans, 12, 8 and 16 bar blues. The cabaret blues of Bessie Smith
is a variation of blues.

Mack McCormick, Alan, Sam Charters et. al. may be scholars and academics but you
might go down the rabbit hole as asking where did music begin? Maybe blues
started with the Neanderthal man on the mouth bow.

This question can not be answered. Delta blues is significant however.