M. Ted. --Weel, lots of attitude but not actual fact. B.B. and T-Bone have a ton of licks. Many of the early blues guys have only a few. Lemon Jefferson is justly famous for his variety. The great Fred McDowell conciously built his songs from only one or two licks, describing his method as building from a lick that sounds good.

ddw--the point of the barred 'G' form is not having a full chord to strum or do pattern picking, but to have access to 'box' forms out of which the bass rhythm riffs can be done. Check out Willie Brown playing behind Chrlie Patton on some of Patton's recordings and behind Son House in some of the 1941 L of C recordings (and listen to his concepts on his only two recordings in his own name "Future Blues" and "M&O Blues").