. Just one last thing Musicologist. I would like you to also understand where the Blues comes from, okay?     First of all the terminology the Blues is a White slang term in the first place.    'The phrase the blues is a reference to the the blue devils, meaning down spirits, melancholy, and sadness. An early reference to the blues can be found in  George Colman's  one act  farce  Blue devils (1798). [1]  Later during the 19th century, the phrase was used as a  euphemism  for  delirium tremens  and the  police , and it has been found used in these contexts in letters from Civil War soldiers.   Though the use of the phrase in  African American music   may  (it's not:D) be older, it has been attested to since 1912, when  Hart Wand's  Dallas Blues  became the first copyrighted Blues composition. [2] [3]  In lyrics the phrase is often used to describe a  depressed mood . [4]    PS- Hart Wand was a White guy from Oklahoma by the way.      Now, also....for those who say that Rock N' Roll music came from the Blues (it really didn't), and therefore it is Black music because Blues is Black music. No, that's not really true, do you even know where Blues music comes from?? It comes from Country just like Rock.     In the beginning, there was no clear musical distinction between what was Country and what was Blues. A Blues song was just a particular type of Country song, not a separate genre. Country was Blues and Blues was Country. Whites played Country and Blues, and Blacks played Country and Blues. Eventually the music promoters began marketing Country/Blues performed by Whites as Hillbilly music, and Country/Blues performed by Blacks as Race music. As times changed the promoters decided that the terms Hillbilly and Race music sounded too offensive so Hillbilly music simply became known as Country, and Race music began to be called simply Blues. But even then, there was usually little or no musical distinction between Blues and Country.      The musical forms and styles that are now considered the blues as well as modern  country music  arose in the same regions during the nineteenth century in the southern United States. Recorded blues and country can be found from as far back as the 1920s, when the popular record industry developed and created marketing categories called  race music  and  hillbilly music  to sell music by blacks for blacks and by whites for whites, respectively.     At the time, there was no clear musical division between blues and country, except for the ethnicity of the performer, and even that was sometimes documented incorrectly by record companies. [24]  Studies have situated the origin of black spirituals inside slaves' exposure to their white  Hebridean -originated gospels. African-American economist and historian  Thomas Sowell  also notes that the southern, black, ex-slave population was acculturated to a considerable degree by and among their Scots-Irish neighbours.       Garofalo, pgs. 44–47  As marketing categories, designations like race and hillbilly intentionally separated artists along racial lines and conveyed the impression that their music came from mutually exclusive sources. Nothing could have been further from the truth... In cultural terms, blues and country were more equal than they were separate.  Garofalo claims that  artists were sometimes listed in the wrong racial category in record company catalogues..    Also worth noting is that Jimmie Rodgers and Charley Patton are considered by most people who know their music as the two most important and influential figures in the formation of Blues music. Jimmie Rodgers...was WHITE, and Charley Patton although not White...was a mulatto of White, Cherokee and Black ancestry.     Jimmie Rodgers greatly influenced very popular and influential Black Blues musicians such as Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters. Howlin' Wolf get his howl from Rodgers, he was greatly influenced by Jimmie Rodgers style of singing, which itself was a result of Jimmie Rodgers having been a yodeler and incorporating this into his singing style. Jimmie Rodgers more than anyone put the howlin' into the Blues. Also, Muddy Waters supposedly got the idea for his stage name from listening to the Jimmie Rodgers song Mississippi River Blues. Muddy Waters already had the nickname Muddy, it was a childhood nickname that he had gotten because as a child he would always play in the mud puddles and get all Muddy and dirty. But in the song Mississippi River Blues from Jimmie Rodgers he talks in the lyrics about the Mississippi Muddy Waters, and supposedly Muddy as he was known at the time heard this song and liked the sound of Mississippi Muddy Waters because his name was already Muddy and he was also from Mississippi and it is supposedly at this time that he attached the Waters to his name. Jimmie Rodgers was a HUGE influence on the Blues and that cannot be understated, but it usually is because of course the media, liberals and Blacks must perpetuate the myth that the Blues is Black music and always has been, which is.......UNTRUE!        Rodgers' legacy and influence is not limited to country music. He was influential to Ozark poet  Frank Stanford , who composed a series of blue yodel poems, and a number of blues artists, among them Chester Arthur Burnett, better known as  Howlin' Wolf .         Jackson, Mississippi , as the birthplace of Jimmy Rodgers, was the first site outside the  Mississippi Delta  to receive a  Mississippi Blues Trail  designation. The ceremony was held at the Singing Brakeman Park located on Front Street and  emphasized the importance of Rodgers to the development of the  blues  in Mississippi . Rodgers was known as the Singing Brakeman and the train was influential in the development of the blues both in the Mississippi Delta and throughout the state. [1]    http://mshistory.k12.ms.us/images/84.jpg Jimmie Rodgers.  Here is one of my favorite Jimmie Rodgers songs Mississippi River Blues  http://search.playlist.com/tracks/mi...mmie%20rodgers  (this version was recorded in 1929).    Now, as for the mulatto Charley Patton. He is considered by most to be the Father of the Delta Blues. I think, that he is, along with Jimmie Rodgers. They were both very influential in the development of the Mississippi Delta Blues, and Blues music in general.     Robert Palmer describes Patton as a jack-of all-trades bluesman who played deep blues, white hillbilly songs, nineteenth century ballads, and other varieties of black and white country dance music with equal facility. [2]        The  Mississippi Blues Trail  placed its first historic marker on Charlie Patton's grave in  Holly Ridge, Mississippi  in recognition of his legendary status as a bluesman and his importance in the development of the blues in Mississippi. [6]  It placed another historic marker at the site where the Peavine Railroad intersects with Highway 446 in  Boyle, Mississippi , designating it as a second site related to Patton on the  Mississippi Blues Trail . The marker commemorates the original lyrics of Patton's Peavine Blues which describes the railway branch of  Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad  which ran south from  Dockery Plantation  to Boyle. The marker emphasizes that a common theme of  blues  songs was riding on the railroad which was seen as a  metaphor  for travel and escape. [7]    Now, here you can clearly see that the Father of the Delta Blues, Charley Patton was not actually Black but rather a mixed race mulatto with a healthy dose of White blood in his veins.    http://photos12.flickr.com/18246713_590df5a96b_o.jpg   http://cdn.last.fm/coverart/300x300/...-169004191.jpg http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...500_AA240_.jpg