Annals of Forced Comparisons (ii)

I was reading in Cooke's book The Language of Music that tonality in Western Music was based on the I, the IV, and the V.  That's obvious, of course. Those are the big three chords of pop music too, and of the blues.  

So to compare the system of tonality, in its entirety, to the blues, seems very forced. Someone who knew how to play blues very well, like Ray Charles, for example, would also know how to play the Andalusian cadence, as in "Hit the Road Jack," or the I, vi, ii, V progression in numerous pop songs. In jazz contexts, the blues might use other harmonic substitutions too.