Best blues guitarist, Clapton or Green

Nobody can stand in the same room with Hendrix. Clapton is a very good knock off. Muddy Waters is up on the top of my list also. Long distance call live is just too much.

Tim

Who's Peter Green?

Unless you have seen Muddy Waters play , which I have, there is nobody, and I mean nobody, who can convey the blues on electric guitar better except and this is a big maybe is BB King. Now if you want to consider acoustic guitar, then maybe Robert Johnson. I saw in the late 60s,
Peter Green, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Jimmy Hendrix, and
Jeff Beck, and although these guys could wail up a storm,
personally I think Eric tried the hardest to emulate a truly blues style. His take on Chester Burnett's(Howlin' Wolf) Smokestack Lightning with the Yardbirds was the best of the derivative blues style. And of course his take on Willie Dixon's Spoonful was masterful and obviously he took Robert Johnson's Crossroad Blues and made it his own.

Shubertmaniac makes a good point about Muddy Waters. He was the real thing. I saw him twice in Chicagos' South side in the mid 60s.
I had the opportunity to meet and get to know Jeff Beck for awhile in 1969. What was interesting was getting to know him in a non musical way. He was in Detroit at the time recording with Stevie Wonder at Motown and during his off time, he was haunting hot rod and speed shops to repair his collection. I was working at such a shop and immediately recognized him when he came in. I eagerly began talking to him and ended up punching out the clock and taking him around town the next few days to visit speed shops and car museums, etc. He showed me how to play his version of Greensleeves on a black Les Paul he was carrying at the time. I'll never forget those times, very special. I would add that of the guitarists that Shubertmaniac mentions, Green struck me the most as the one trying to interpret the blues from a more traditional perspective. It became even more obvious from his recent acoustic work and exhaustive interpretation of the Robert Johnson catalogue. I find it difficult to tell that he is white when I listen to his vocals of late. Still, Clapton brought more immediacy to the blacker blues when he was with Mayall, very nice stuff.Just my opinion and I certainly respect the other comments being written for this thread.

REL2

Bobgates,

Green was the founder/cofounder of the original Fleetwood Mac. He wrote Black Magic Woman (which Santana took even higher) and many other memorable pieces like the Green Manalishi and Albatross (hello Santo and Johnnie). There is something of a mystique around Mr.green due to the fact that he went from a mediocre guitar player to a wunderkind in a remarkably short period of time. Some people because of his interest in Robert Johnson, compared him to the Johnson myth that he had sold his soul to the devil in return for skill and fame. Whatever, he could make a guitar cry like nobody else. He had a distinctive style as did Clapton and a few others in those early years of English white blues players. You can learn a lot more about him from the liner notes in the many CD compilations out there like "The Vaudeville years" and "Showbiz Blues". Also check out Mick Fleetwoods book about the early Mac years (How do you spell decadent?) Hope this fills him out a little.
One last thing, Peter still tours occasionally. Go the distance to hear him if you want to hear the closest possible interpretation of Robert Johnsons' acoustic blues left on our planet. It can make the hair on your arms start to curl.