Yuku free message boards

I believe that many of our differences of opinion about Blues and other music are due not so much to differing interpretations of facts but rather are due to differences in taste. I say Clapton could play circles around McClennan, and outdoes him by far in guitar skill, but it still boils down to taste, some value guitar skill more than they value the Blues, some, like me, value the Blues more than they value guitar skill. I might say that Eric Clapton or Albert King can do anything and everything on a guitar except for one thing, that one thing is to play what I myself prefer to hear. I gradually started to withdraw my attention from the "new generation" of Blues performers back in the late 1960s and into the 1970s when the Chicago Blues started getting infected by obsession with guitar (and somewhat harp) virtuosity. I gravitated to who was left alive of the "old generations" and even began to rely on old recordings of dead people more than on those yet living. There must be something about what old fogeys like me mean when we say "Blues" that is simply not understood. To me what is the best Blues and who has the best guitar skills are 2 questions that have little to do with each other. I would rather to hear someone with a crummy voice and barely passable instrumental skills performing deep into that Blues gut bucket than to hear the ultra polished super skilled Blues performances that have taken over the last few decades that are comparatively shallow and boring to me.
That is just my taste, not based on any reason or logic or facts, just personal taste.
So give me all your Tommy McClennan and Memphis Minnie and Lighting Hopkins and you can have all my Eric Clapton and Albert King and I don't know, SRV?