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Page tears his way through the Since I've Been Loving You solo so gut-wrenchingly because he's well grounded in the blues and knows how to wring every last ounce of juice from the solo,

And his mastery of minor scales helped as well, which isn't exactly common for a blues-based guitarist. (Brian May was another minor key monster).

I'm with ya -- a thorough grounding in the blues is essential for a rock guitarist, from acoustic (delta) blues to electric (Chicago) blues ....Charley Patton, Son House, Skip James, RJ, Elmore James, J.L. Hooker, The Wolf, Muddy, etc.

When I was in high school (in the late 70s) I didn't know a thing about any of these guys, even though I'd been playing guitar for about 4 years by then. One day I was browsing in a used record store in L.A. and an old guy who worked there recommended I get one blues album and one jazz album -- Robert Johnson's King of the Delta Blues and Miles Davis' Kind of Blue. ...and that was that -- I was hooked. Never got tired of listening to them, and always discovered new things I hadn't heard before. ....and still do to this day.

And his mastery of minor scales helped as well, which isn't exactly common for a blues-based guitarist. (Brian May was another minor key monster).

Good point -- and David Gilmour could go on that list too.

a thorough grounding in the blues is essential for a rock guitarist, from acoustic (delta) blues to electric (Chicago) blues ....Charley Patton, Son House, Skip James, RJ, Elmore James, J.L. Hooker, The Wolf, Muddy, etc.

Yep. Blues is where you learn the vocabulary to play rock. I've always thought Freddy King was a great source for cool blues licks that can be reused for rock playing. You mention Howlin Wolf -- Hubert Sumlin was another one with a lot of rock-ready blues licks.

I started playing guitar in 1990 when I was in highschool. I began with Zeppelin, Hendrix, and Clapton, then worked backwards into the blues. I've always liked that reverse deja vu experience you get when you listen to a blues album and hear a lick that Page or Clapton or whoever lifted almost verbatim (Sumlin's Killing Floor riff comes to mind). You really get a sense of where it all came from.