In my view, B. B. King is king of the blues. Then there is this guy, Chris Cain.

Elsewhere on the list are the other great blues guys who are still with us -- John Lee Hooker, Eric Clapton, some others.

That's an amazing statement, I know, but tough. Everything is subjective.

Chris Cain has such an amazing talent that other considerations just have to take back seats.

He gets the most beautiful tones from his Gibson 335 guitars. He goes the most amazing places with his lead solos, because the dude, in addition to knowing the licks, is a student of music. He heard the music, learned to play, got the blues, then learned it academically. He has a powerful, flexible baritone voice and he is an excellent songwriter.

I used to hear him often in the early '90s, which was a very good time for the blues in the San Francisco Bay Area. Since then, a number of factors have hurt the blues, at the clubs level, and things are a bit grimmer for all club blues people, including, maybe, Chris Cain.

When I saw him a lot, he had one of the three or four best blues bands then touring. B.B.King, Chris Cain, Albert Collins, Elvin Bishop and Robert Cray had the best regular blues bands touring then, I think. (I put Stevie Ray Vaughn in some other category.)

Cain's band then had Noel Catura on sax and Danny Beconcini on keyboards, and man, it doesn't get better than that.

But, then, Albert King died. Bad times for Cain. He loved King, hated to see him go. I heard a couple of different stories about what happened, but Cain broke up his band, and started playing gigs with pick-up musicians.

Soon after that, I had to cut back on my blues-club crawling, and, in fact, a lot of the clubs started closing, or going to other kinds of music. The few times I have seen Cain perform since those days, he has not had a band as good as the one he had in the early '90s.

But, frankly, I don't care. The man himself is brilliant, has the blues. And, I hope, one of these days he will form a band as good or better as what he had in the early '90s, and I think that will help him achieve the kind of status he deserves in the world, not just in my blues-loving heart, and the hearts of his many fans.

The following free-lance piece was first published on March 6, 1992. It was, necessarily, trimmed back quite a bit. To read the fuller notes of the interview with Chris Cain, click here. A lot of fun stuff therein.

By John Orr

Welcome to "Chris' World."

It isn't about a metal-head who finds glory on cable TV, but a brilliant blues man who still lives at home at age 36, his bedroom walls covered with posters, his floor covered 2 feet deep with clothes, notebooks, headphones, books, CDs. His shelves are loaded with stereo gear, videotapes of early '60s TV shows, guitar magazines and photographs of him with B.B. King, Albert King, Albert Collins, "Champion" Jack Dupree and other blues icons.

"Basically I could just play in the room the rest of my life and just have a blast," says Chris Cain, who probably more than anyone else, anywhere, represents the
future of the blues. "It's the only reason I really travel and stuff . . . 'cause I love to play the guitar."

In the San Francisco Bay Area, he does what club owners want: "He fills the house," says June Stanley of the JJ's clubs. In Memphis, Philadelphia, New York, Belgium, Norway and Switzerland, he and his band -- one of the best in the blues world -- are building a following. He's currently in the studio working on his third album, he played a six-day gig at B.B. King's Blues Club in Memphis last fall, and one of his guitars hangs on the wall at Memphis' Rum Boogie club.

'That's the cool deal about traveling. We go to Philadelphia now, and people are acting like 'YAHHHHH!' "

Christopher Clade Cain is the third child of Georgia Cain and Walter Fields, two ardent music lovers who've "been together for at least 45 years," Chris says, without marrying.

''They were like the modern couple, way ahead of their times. Kind of nutty in them days, believe me. I can remember a few little altercations. . . . One time the police pulled them over. They thought my dad was kidnapping my mom -- seeing a black cat with a white lady."

There has always been music in the house. "Man, their record collection, it's like the Smithsonian," Cain says. And Georgia and Walter always took their boys -- Rex, Tootie ("his real name is James") and Chris -- to shows.

Fields had a small electric guitar he gave to his son almost 30 years ago that is still in that memorabilia-packed room in his parents' San Jose house. Chris rejected lessons and instead spent hours listening to blues records, learning lead parts by ear.

He made friends with guitarist Sammy Varela and a knot of other San Jose East Side blues fans who were very much out of step with their high-school contemporaries in the deadly disco '70s.

The East Side guys eventually met other Bay Area players -- Andy Just, Kevin Coggins, Gary Smith, Michael Osborn, Robben, Mark, Robben and Pat Ford, Kenny Baker.

''The first time I heard Robben just was . . . a little frightening. About 1972. The way he was playing the guitar, the tone he had, his lines. I said: 'I quit. That's it. No more guitar for me, buddy.' "

But rather than give up, Cain took lessons at San Jose City College -- where he finally learned the mysteries of scales and keys. Before he could play memorized tunes, "but I didn't know what I was doing." It was in college that Cain learned about jazz improvisation -- which often shows up in his fascinating solos.

When, as Cain puts it, "Stevie Ray Vaughan and Robert Cray blew the doors off the blues cellar" in the '80s, the Chris Cain band was ready to pull its leader out of his bedroom and onto blues stages.

But even after earning a devoted following, being nominated for W.C. Handy awards, playing in Europe, putting out two albums (1987's "Late Night City Blues" on
Blue Rock'It and 1990's "Cuttin' Loose" on Blind Pig), and many other honors, Cain is still nervous on stage.

''About everything," he says. People crowd into his shows, standing room only, and he's still afraid they won't like his playing. He makes his bed in the hotel rooms because he's afraid the maid will get upset.

So getting up on that stage is a major move.

'It's like a transformation," Cain explains. "That guy up there, that cat, he's a whole different guy!"

Cain's band, like his guitar playing, appealing bass voice and touching, honest songwriting, are a part of his increasing popularity. At the live shows, fans go as nuts for solos from Noel Catura on sax or Danny Beconcini on keyboards as for a Cain guitar solo. The band also includes Mark Whitney on tenor and baritone
saxophones, Robert Higgins on drums and Ron Torgenson on bass. All former jazz players, they all bring stunning musicianship to the blues.

''I remember when Robert came in the band," Cain says. "He'd been in a fusion band, hadn't played a lot of blues. And we were playing at the Hyatt. There are two people in there, and they come up after a tune, and ask for some disco stuff. Higgs stands up and he says, 'OK, baby! See that sign over there? It says exit. You go right up there and across the street and they're playing that shit all night!'

"'And I'm going, 'OK, he's converted. He's a blues guy.' "