When someone is a blues player you are going to hear a lot of influences come through in there playing it is just a given. Take Clapton with the bluesbreakers and at his heaviest with Cream there is a lot of Freddie King in his playing at this period in time but it is not like he is doing an imitation he is just putting a twist on a style and making it his own. Same with SRV the big Albert King bends--He used to call Albert his godfather-- but he also turned it all into his own Guys like Clapton and Stevie Ray always mentioned there influences which in a (sic) way helped there careers. For the younger guys who are just getting deep into the blues which is an original African American form of music that was never appreciated here in America. It was American GIs that were stationed in England who had some blues records with them that the English kids got there hands on kids like Clapton,Beck,Page,Peter Green and the like that went nuts for this music and copied it and played it at super loud levels and became super famous and the minute they came to the states wanted to meet there idols only to be shocked to find out no one here even knew who these guys were. So in reality they sold us back our own music. But they are also the guys who took BB King, Howlin Wolf,Muddy Waters and most of the greats back to England in the 60s where they were treated like royalty and got to make some music. Catch an interview with BB King or Buddy Guy and they will talk about this and how appreciative they are to those guys for putting them on the map even though it was there own music.