As the late John Peel said - people were always telling me. BB King is the real thing - much better than Clapton. I listened to BB King. I liked him, but what Clapton does is different to the Americans. I prefer it.

I remember seeing BB King interviewed on TV a few years back and it was very obvious that he had a great deal of respect for Eric Clapton.

I like your view that Clapton and BB King are different, not that one is necessarily better than the other. Whether one is "better" is a matter of personal preference. That was something I felt when I was briefly reading the comparison of the two versions of Sugar Babe just now. (having ignored this thread after a look early on) The two versions were different but which was "better" was purely a matter of personal taste. For some reason there seems to be a reluctance to acknowledge that two things can be different without one necessarily being better than the other.