DISTINCT Results Based On The Value Of One Col?

Here's one thats had me and a coworker puzzled. Hopefully it's something simple:

TABLE A: (log of messages)
userid, int
date, datetime
message, varchar(50)

Table A Data:
1, 6/18/2008 @ 2:32:41, This is my message
1, 6/18/2008 @ 2:31:02, This is my message
1, 6/17/2008 @ 7:34:26, This is another message
2, 6/18/2008 @ 2:32:41, This is not his message
2, 6/16/2008 @ 11:21:32, This is my message


TABLE B: (List of users)
userid, int
name, varchar(100)

Table B Data:
1, John
2, Mike

I want to extract the most recent message logged per user, i.e.:

name | date | message
--------|---------------------|-------------------------
John | 6/18/2008 @ 2:32:41 | This is my message
Mike | 6/18/2008 @ 2:32:41 | This is not his message.

I have been unable to come up with a query that can return just the one value. I've tried variants of:

SELECT DISTINCT b.name, a.date, a.message
FROM a INNER JOIN
b ON a.userid = b.userid

including sub-queries and even played with the visual diagrams trying to design this in Enterprise Manager but none of the combinations I tried work. Is there an easy way to do this via a query? I don't have experience with stored procedures. Would that be necessary?

TIA