On the use of formulae in blues compositions

This will be a short post, I promise. I’m writing it because I need to make clear the principles according to which I’ll analyze, from now on, the various pre-war blues lyrics I’m intersted in.
In substance and effect, the blues is oral poetry (performed in front of an audience). This means that compositions consist mainly (or entirely) in a set of “aedic formulae” (or topoi / loci communi). When you’re a folk singer, the general idea in using a formula is to trick the audience by singing something familiar while looking for the next verse. In such compositional circumstances, it may be senseless to analyze the lyrics. As a matter of fact, Skip James recalls that the cotton pickers who he sang for didn’t pay any attention to the lyrics, as interested in catching the rhythm and dancing as they were. But it is also true that the choice of a particular formula is not indifferent. A folk singer knows hundreds of formulae, feels that there are a few tens of them fitting to the song he’s singing and finally chooses a particular one. I agree that a singer may never be aware of what he’s doing when choosing a particular formula, but I don’t really care about it. and this lack of care (careless writing, as in Careless love) is consistent with the interpretative model I’ll be using.
The model was invented by Arthur C. Danto, a philosopher who shows particular interest in aesthetics and art & literary criticism.
In short, the model consists in three interpretative axes:
1. The referrential axis: what the words are referring to (e.g. the Mobile and Ohio railroad in M&O Blues, a wooden voodoo artifact for “mojo hand”).
2. The intertextual axis: the silent dialog of texts, the moment when a song sends to another song or to a very known phrase (the use of allusions, citations and parody – e.g. reap what you sow, Picking my potatoes vs Picking my tomatoes).
3. The personal axis: and when when I say personal, I mean myself – what is the song saying to me. So I guess it’s OK to integrate the interpretation of the formulae with the interpretation of the whole song; by doing so, I’ll be able to show you just how rich might be the lyrics of a “primitive blues”. Now let me tell you a little story. In 1946, when Allan Lomax went down south looking for new materials (to be honest for his personal i.e. laterly commercial collction), he ran into Honeyboy Edwards – actually the last living prewar bluesman. He met him in Natchez, if I’m not wrong, in a barrelhouse, but the owner wouldn’t let them fix a recording session because the Black and White folks weren’t allowed to congregate; so they went on the field; and during the session, it started raining; and when the rain stopped, Lomax asked Honeyboy to improvise a song about the rain; and Honeyboy sings about the lighnings and the raind and the wind blowing, and then about his baby who doan’ luv hin ne mo’, and suddenly the song ain’t no mo’ ’bout the rain but about what Honeyboy feels, ’bout his blues. Well, this is what I’m talking about.
Unfortunately, I was unable to find (for you ) the whole song I’m referring to, but here’s another David Honeyboy Edwards classic, Gamblin’ Man.

PS OK, the next two posts will be dedicated to Willie Brown’s songs.