yeah, exactly. The sentiment expressed in that eulogy is fine, but it's clear the writer isn't a player, and doesn't have a clue how Stevie Ray arrived at his style. Like almost everybody else he learned by copying his idols, voraciously. Originality, especially in a fairly narrow style like electric blues, is all in the interpretation, the licks and techniques are pretty much carved in granite. If you don't know them, you can't play the style, and you learn them by imitating.

It is annoying to walk into a music store and hear a bunch of bad SRV clones, but that's got nothing to do with the process of copying -- the best players on the planet also learn by copying, they just bring more to the game than the music-store noodlers.