<P> Handy had mixed feelings about this music, which he regarded as rather primitive and monotonous, but he used the "Southern cross' the Dog" line in his 1914 "Yellow Dog Rag", which he retitled "Yellow Dog Blues" after the term blues became popular . "Yellow Dog" was the nickname of the Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad . </P> <P> Blues later adopted elements from the "Ethiopian (here, meaning "black") airs" of minstrel shows and Negro spirituals, including instrumental and harmonic accompaniment . The style also was closely related to ragtime, which developed at about the same time, though the blues better preserved "the original melodic patterns of African music". </P> <P> Since the 1890s, the American sheet music publishing industry had produced a great deal of ragtime music . The first published ragtime song to include a 12 - bar section was "One o' Them Things!" in 1904 . Written by James Chapman and Leroy Smith, it was published in St. Louis, Missouri, by Jos . Plachet and Son . Another early rag / blues mix was "I Got the Blues" published in 1908 by Anthony Maggio of New Orleans </P> <P> In a long interview conducted by Alan Lomax in 1938, Jelly Roll Morton recalled that the first blues he had heard, probably around 1900, was played by a singer and prostitute, Mamie Desdunes, in Garden District, New Orleans . Morton sang the blues: "Can't give me a dollar, give me a lousy dime / You can't give me a dollar, give me a lousy dime / Just to feed that hungry man of mine". The interview was released as The Complete Library of Congress Recordings . </P>

Where did the blues emerge as a style