A lot of early country and country blues singers, including Jimmie, the Carter Family, the Delmore Brothers and many others played a lot more loosely than today's equivalents - and their music sounds freer and less ordinary.
Thanks for the song Will.
A few months ago I set out on an adventure to learn to play the alternating bass style,
commonly called the Travis style.
I soon discovered others before him played it.....
for example...There were black blues players in the south.
The best I can tell, Travis indirectly learned it from them.
I think I read somewhere that a southern black blues player moved to
Kentucky and taught it to some white guy who taught it to Travis......makes sense to me.
So I spent some time listening to Cotton, Johnson and others.
There were some techniques of interest to me...I want to incorporate into 'my style'.
but to be honest...
I felt like the same old 12 bars played in a predefined chord sequence
quickly became too confining.
The Carter family and others provided a nice variety and added interest as you mentioned, Will.
Maybe we could call it the 'modified blues'.
...think I'll work on my first blues song and call it
I got the modified blues - in E sharp

...before someone fires back an email to slap my chording left hand about that E sharp...
relax, its a play on words - sharp - as in keen, cool....you're lookin' sharp today...etc
as in - The Carter's and others who modified the basic blues pattern....had a SHARP idea

- Larry