I'd still rank BB and a few others right up there with him, though. Delta blues is my favorite, but I also like Piedmont Blues - has a little bluegrass in it. Favorite band there was BillyBlues - too bad they broke up now. They started out trying to sing Delta but didn't think they did it justice, so they switched to Piedmont. There's even a rare strain of gospel blues, and they made the very best example, a song called "Jesus Is My Whiskey". Best harmonica I ever heard. Then we must remember the greatest of all white blues men, SRV.
The best and truest comment I ever heard about Tracy Chapman was a compliment even though the reviewer didn't mean it that way. He wrote, "She doesn't sing. She laments." So in a way, although she doesn't technically sing blues most of the time, it feels just as good to me. And she has a fantastic video with BB King on YouTube. I don't have the url handy but you should look it up.
BB once had a little white kid protege, Brody Buster, who at 7 could belt out the blues like a house on fire. I had great hopes for him, but when he grew up he changed so much I didn't care for him at all.
Another boy wonder who did pan out, though, is JD Simo. He was well known as the apple of Buddy Guy's eye, and I used to go to a biker-friendly old-fashioned blues roadhouse just to hear him many nights. My only disappointment there was that by his mid-20's JD turned to country music in Nashville, playing a smokin' lead guitar for some other guy's band. As far as I'm concerned, they don't deserve him. He belongs onstage with BB and Buddy again, or by himself. Good kid, too. I always nabbed the front table closest to the stage for his shows at the Pines, and one evening he stopped the show to acknowledge "this fine lady who's always been a great supporter..." He THREW guitar picks into the crowd for everyone else, but he always walked over and politely handed me my souvenir of the evening.
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