"the" blues guitar

i'm just talking for the sake of talking here. i'm curious about what guitars have earned their right as the ultimate ___ guitar.

the reason i'm asking this is, i live in a neat area in downtown st. louis that is a small neighborhood speckled with blue collar bars and a lot of blues/jazz places. a lot of nights if i'm bored i'll go watch some of these blues bands or blues guitarists. now that i am playing guitar, i'm taking more notice about what they're doing and what they're playing with.

out of the small slice of blues players i've seen, 100% of the blues guitarists play stratocasters. i've seen one or two les pauls in the blues bands (the difference being: blues band = lead singer, keyboards, maybe a horn section, and a guitarist. they play more jazz and old dance hits. blues guitarist = guitar, bass, drum kit, and they cover a lot of SRV, jimi, etc.)

now i know that any guitar can be used to play any style of music, it's up to the taste of the guitarist, blah blah blah. BUT i've always gotten the impression that the stratocaster is sort of the posterchild of blues guitars.

BUT at the same time i know that the les paul is historically a great american guitar. what sort of style did the les pauls get used in more often back in the day (when it earned its popularity?) and obviously the telecaster was another great american guitar, and i've seen a couple of blues bands play with it, but all of the blues guitarists --- they all use stratocasters.

this one dude steve pecaro has this relic strat the thing looks like it got into a fight with a belt sander it is the coolest thing i have ever seen and he's so frickin' good... makes me feel like a chump.

ANYWAY i'm just curious on your thoughts. i mean obviously the telecaster, stratocaster, and les pauls are considered "legendary american guitars" i'm just curious how they earned that title (since i wasn't born until the '80s)

talk amongst yourselves.

Yeah most of em does, but there is also many exeptions like BB king, Johhny Winter and many reso -electric players like Eric Sardinas... but yeah single coils works cool with blues... and ofcourse... quality of Fender guitars is unquestionable.

Two major reasons why a guitar becomes 'legendary' (there are probably more) a)the guitarist that plays it (his/her standing in the music community). b) How 'sexy' the guitar in question looks.
Just an 'old farts' point of view. I'm not saying I'm right!