formers they were looking for the blues they were familiar with from the sheet music of Handy and others. In terms of popular music forms, the thirty years from 1892 to 1922 represent several lifetimes -- even in those days of much slower communications. Then, when blues music was commercially recorded, it was popularized in the styles of the vaudeville-tinged women performers who dominated the field for several years. It was not until the late 1920s that the rural blues, seen as the music's 'original' form, began to be recorded and spread with greater ease to a wider audience. Blues history presents a curious case of circular influences as the blues heard by Handy and singer "Ma" Rainey" around the turn of the century were transformed by these artists and returned to the source in a commercialized form via sheet music, recordings, and traveling musicians. Thus by the time country blues were recorded the rural players' style had been "so influenced by commercial blues forms that it is very difficult to sift through the performances
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