Not meaning to argue and Son House is my personal blues favorite but blues were not the only component of rock and roll.
There is most definitely Appalachin Folk, traditional Country and Western, Gospel and Minstrel and Blues all rolled together.
Delta blues really seriously influenced 60s harder edge rock bands....they took it and ran well with it.
It's a shame so few of the early giants....Johnson, House or Patton ever had any decent recordings done. All of Johnson's stuff was done on junk recording equipment. I don't think Patton (who started as a minstrel in my opinion) ever had access to decent technology either.
Son House did courtesy if Alan Lomax Sr whom we all owe bigtime or we would have almost nothing on the early greats.
The latter giants like Muddy and Wolf or Hopkins had some well recorded stuff.
I have an old copy of a Son House dead letter recording originally made on a piece of thick metal ...I forget what they call it. It's from the early 20s and at an evening church social in Indianola Miss....you can hear the old steam train coming by while it's recorded.
anyhow...sorry for the rant...Sat morning meandering...sometimes I think folks like Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, the Carter Family, Bob Wills and others from the mixed aforementioned genres are forgotten about as major influences on early rock and roll as well....the blues masters not withstanding.
I plead ignorance about Jazz....I know some the names, that's all
Martin Scorsese: “What’s that called?”
Helm (smiling): “Rock ’n’ roll.”
Scorsese (laughing): "Yes rock 'n' roll, of course."
Ole Levon could've added a few more types of music to that list as well -- gospel, R&B, etc.
And without Charlie Christian (a jazzman who played behind Benny Goodman)there's no electric guitar. Without Les Paul there's maybe no r&r electric guitar.
In the forties there was no R&B, it was Race Music and it evolved in places that were just brushed by the blues (especially Tulsa - a true hotbed and LA). A different kind of Blues evolved in Chicago that had a jazzier feel than the music coming out of the Delta. There was what we now call country that grew out of Scots/Irish hard times music. There was Jazz that had multiple styles based primarily on the part of the country where it was being played.
And, there was radio. The AM band reached everywhere and everybody heard everything. Then white guys started playing like black guys and the vice was versa. There is no "father of Rock and Roll". There are too many who can make that claim with some degree of truth. The only fully accurate statement that can be made is that it is American...just like Tap dancing which evolved on the streets of NYC where displaced blacks from the south Cake-walked on one side of the street and Irish refugees from the potato famine jigged on the other.