Preview of guitarists Steve Lukather and Larry Carlton's blues gig in Hong Kong

"The blues had a baby and they named it rock'n'roll," Muddy Waters sang, and although the parentage is less obvious than it used to be, it is inescapable in the guitar playing of Larry Carlton and Steve Lukather, who play the AC Hall together on Thursday.

However, it's not the same blues: Carlton and Lukather were born at opposite ends of the (blues) baby boom - Carlton in 1948 and Lukather in 1957 - so their formative influences are different.

By the time the "British invasion" of the mid-1960s was re-exporting the blues to the US, at previously unimagined volume, Carlton was well into his teens. He grew up with the sophisticated jazz-influenced urban blues guitar playing of T. Bone Walker and B.B. King, setting the foundation for his versatile style.

Lukather heard the more anarchic take on the music of Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix, and that shaped his.

Carlton approaches the blues as a jazzman and Lukather as a rocker. It's an effective combination of styles, as the occasional duo's Grammy-winning live recording No Substitutions demonstrates nicely.

Recorded in 1998 in Osaka - Lukather and Carlton both enjoy significant and overlapping followings in Japan - it was released in 2001 and won the Grammy for best pop instrumental album in 2002. It's a curious category for them (Carlton has three other Grammys, Lukather four). No Substitutions is essentially a jazz-rock-blues album, with Carlton choosing Miles Davis' All Blues and Lukather selecting Beck's The Pump for the cover tunes; the rest were Carlton compositions. The covers allowed each man to excel in his particular territory and invite the other into it.

Both musicians have plenty to bring to the table. Their repertoire includes Cause We've Ended As Lovers, a great guitar instrumental ballad also belonging to Beck (although it was composed by Stevie Wonder), Hendrix's Red House, and The Crusaders' Put It Where You Want It on which then-band member Carlton played the original lead guitar.