Da Blues

Blues is an incredible style of music. Every song has meaning and a story behind it. The words are chosen carefully and put together in a groovy fashion. There were many great black blues artists like Ray Charles; were there any famous white blues players back then? Someone else mentioned in their post about whether Ray Charles gained a lot of fame just for being blind. I was wondering the same thing. Ray was obviously very talented but, there were many other talented blues players out there, was he really that much better than the rest of them or did he gain a lot of recognition for being blind?