I don't have any one single favorite artist...BUT:

There's a very special place in my heart for Mississippi John Hurt, both as a role-model instrumentalist and as a beautiful musical personna. The question is, is he definitively a blues artist? Not really, to my way of thinking; when I think of the blues, I'm thinking of something more intensely emotive.

Then there's Bobert's favorite, Mississippi Fred, who I was fortunate enough to meet in person once, many years ago, and who certainly provided a certain kind of inspiration, although I never did come to follow very closely in his footsteps in any kind of stylistic sense.

As a strictly acoustic guitar owner and player, I have a number of favorite "role models" ranging (chronologically) from Dave Van Ronk to Keb Mo. DVR also serves as one of my white-guy favorites along with Butterfield and Bloomfield, John Hammond Jr., John Mayall and many others.

But there is one blues player, a Chicago-style electric blues giant, someone whose playing I could never hope, never even try, to emulate, who really captured my imagination, years ago, like nobody else: Buddy Guy.

Just a couple of days ago, I wrote an appreciation of my favorite Buddy Guy recording in another thread, one on the topic of "slow blues":

A Man and The Blues