There's nothing wrong with being fascinated by the blues as a boy. I heard about Robert Johnson back in the early 90s when I read about the impact he had on rock and rollers and blues people, and Kieth Richards was mentioned. Race as you mentioned is a construct, and in particular an American one in this case. For Keith, as a young aspiring guitarist, he got hold of the Robert Johnson music, Crossroads, and simply tried to figure out what was going on. How could one person in the late 1920s or so have this bizarre mastery. Johnson has an extra string on the guitar and it sounded through his unique technique like two pople playing. I too was perplexed and fasinated by it. and I can easily understand who he as an aspiring guitarist was trying to figure it out, as many others had. Not having the American baggage against blacks as a Brit, his inclination to imitate came from a place of interest, not deliberate apporpriation. It was I beleive a facination with the technical prowess and hunting voice of Johnson in particular, though other blues as well. There is nothing wrong with being influenced by grreat moving musicians and bringing the profound depth of feeling to a greater audience. I'm not a big Stones Fans and don't own any albums, so I'm not defending them. I'm only considering the orgins and the positive influence black musicians had by protraying raw emotional pain and joy rather than the prepackaged, cliched and artifically posished whiteness of Sinatra and his croners. They are bad, but don't touch the deeper cord of suffering that the blues does. I'm glad to bluesman won out in their influence in rock over the rat pack, which included Sammy Davis who appropriated whhite culture.