Riley B. King started out in blues and gospel, and, he has freely admitted,
went where the money was. King has spoken explicitly about this.
He has also confessed that gospel remained near to his heart,
even if he didn't sing it any longer.
Moreover, King had musical ambition, however diplomatic he was about presenting it;
he always longed to record music that was more like jazz than like blues,
which meant educating himself as a musician
with a training that was unavailable to him when he was very young.

The man known as Howlin' Wolf was equally aware of a bigger world of music,
whatever his performances and recordings limit themselves to.
For confirmation, one need only pay attention to statements
from Hubert Sumlin,
whom the Wolf insisted should get more education, somewhere,
on playing the guitar.

These two singers/songwriters had two different approaches to singing,
and it does not surprise me to hear
that a listener who looks up to one, belittles the other.
That's kind of an emotional reaction,
and what is more appropriate to listening to music, than emotion?
So that form of discrimination has its place.

If King did not hit the peaks or the depths of
the emotion in Howlin' Wolf's singing,
King's ambition and appetite for music took him to
a breadth of repertoire and style outside of the Wolf's territory.
Many is the music journalist,
reviewing whatever was King's latest vocal recording of the day
(until he got THAT old and his voice simply wore out and got wobbly) ,
who wrote (and published) in astonishment,
why, King really knows how to sell a lyrical ballad! In surprise.

Is the blues like flamenco, the purview of the aficionado, the fanatic?
In some circles it is, and very emotional are the opinions from such.
Again, that's their prerogative.

King, however, has been compared to Louis Armstrong,
NOT for the way he sings,
but for the trails he blazed and the ambassadorship he maintained
in taking his kinds of music
to people who had never before listened to it with respect.