First off Johnson, Waters and to a large part Hooker were pure blues guys. Not to mention Jimmyjazz asked for songs “that don’t sound like anything else”. True to their art, they suffered for it. And would only start to capitalize on their talents after the British Invasion. But blues sounded like blues. It pretty much could be identified in four notes.
Ray on the other hand popularized an entirely new sound with the combination of the blues, and gospel. And got shit from the black community for doing that very thing. And used time signatures in ways no musician had ever done up to that point. The guy laid the groundwork for what would come.
So far as Elvis. I’m not sure how old you are but that is some serious revisionist history. Not only did Elvis get the very music that Ray developed onto the airwaves, which no one would dare play prior. He got the white community to buy it, and buy a lot of it. The reason? Because the white community had never heard such a sound. Sure, doesn’t sound like much now. But ask anyone who was there the cultural impact Elvis had. We would have eventually got the music on the air, Elvis just short cut the process. Elvis drove rock and roll mainstream. And yeah, he was a good looking guy.
Hey, I dig it if you don’t agree. But, I have been a musician most of my life. It is simply how I remember it.