Ken Lyon publicity photo from 1960. His recording career has had its ups and downs — mostly downs.

In more than 40 years of making music, Ken Lyon has gone from pre-Beatle popster to solo acoustic bluesman to blues-rock titan to traditional folkie and back again. And on his 66th birthday at the Stadium Theatre in Woonsocket, he’ll recap the whole thing.

“I’ve never had a chance to put it all together,” Lyon says. And there’s a lot to assemble.

Lyon says he’ll start off Saturday’s show with a few solo numbers, then add pianist Mark Taber, his compadre for nearly all of his career. Rhode Island Celtic masters Pendragon, with whom Lyon plays guitar and bass and sings, will take the stage for a few songs; then The Shoe Fly Orchestra, Lyon’s latest project including Lori Lacaille, Richie Calitri, Greg Andreozzi and Pendragon’s Bob Drouin, will play a few of their “skiffle-billy” tunes, as Lyon describes them.

That’s just the first set.

After an intermission, Lyon will return with a reincarnated Tombstone Blues Band, his band, through various lineups, from 1967 through 1990. The group will include Gary Gramolini (from Beaver Brown), Lyon’s son Joshua, Rick Bellaire, Don Culp and singers including Brenda Moser and Lacaille, playing “the southern blues-rock and R&B I adore.”

Lyon’s range will be on display throughout the evening, as well as on The Best of Ken Lyon, Vol. 1, a compilation of Lyon’s work from 1960 to 1990 which will be available at the show.

The idea for the show, and the record, came from Lyon, Culp and Bellaire, who got together last year at the funeral of original Tombstone guitarist Paul DiChiara. Bellaire was in charge of putting together a collection of musicians from all the bands DiChiara had played in over the years to play an “Irish wake” for the guitarist. On the way home, Bellaire says, Culp had the idea to do something similar for Lyon before — um, before …

“They’ll have a jam session after I’m dead,” Lyon says, “but this way I can be a part of it.”

Lyon says it’s been a major undertaking to get the recording together, as well as to get so many musicians together and rehearse them properly, and he’s “humbled and honored” by the work that everyone has put in, particularly Bellaire, who, Lyon says, “knows more about my discography than I do.”

“I was and still am embarrassed by some of it,” Lyon says, “but once you get past [the early stuff] it takes off.” Bellaire, the musical director for the evening, says that it took “some arm-twisting” to get Lyon to agree to do early stuff such as “White House” and “Fallen Idol,” but they’re in the mix, as well as solo-blues numbers such as the vaunted “Volkswagen Blues” and the risqué “Percy the Dragon.”

Lyon calls himself “The King of the Cutout Bins,” and his recording career has had its ups and downs — well, mostly downs. “There hasn’t been a thing that could go wrong that didn’t,” he says.

Record companies went out of business. A solo single (1965’s “My Life”) wasn’t released because Eric Burdon and the Animals put out “It’s My Life” the week before Lyon’s planned release. Lyon recalls heading to a solo recording session in the late ’60s and finding the studio door locked with a seizure notice from the sheriff on it.

Lyon points with pride to an early-’70s Variety review of the all-white Tombstone which read “southern blues and R&B … possible white crossover.” “That’s a hell of a compliment,” he exults.

But by 1975, Joshua was a year old, and Lyon made a choice: He gave up the full-time rock ’n’ roll life and became a teacher. He taught in Hawaii, then returned to Rhode Island and taught at Burrillville High School until retiring in 2002.

Those in his situation who made the opposite choice, he says, may have become more famous than Lyon, but the cost was higher than he was willing to pay. “If they’re alive, they’ve been married three or four times, and everyone hates them.”

So instead Lyon became a local institution, with Tombstone becoming a rite of passage for players and audience members alike for decades in Rhode Island.

Bob Drouin, of Pendragon and the Shoe Fly Orchestra, first saw Lyon in a pre-Tombstone band, sneaking into a Cumberland bar and hanging in the back because he wasn’t old enough to be in there legally.

“I was always aware of him,” says Drouin, 56. “A local hometown hero — the guy all the kids looked up to.”

Drouin calls Lyon, whose two stints with Pendragon total close to 15 years, “a real inspiration,” then and now. “I think it’s a great concept,” he says of the concert. “Kenny plays so many genres of music and plays them so well. He just loves to play.”

Mary Lee Partington, of Pendragon, taught at Burrillville High along with Lyon, and says “he was a wonderful partner there.”

She recalls the documentary School Stories, filmed roughly 10 years ago, which included footage of Lyon playing for his English students. “To watch him even then, playing old English ballads right out of the English textbooks, it was just amazing the way he performed on both stages,” referring to education and music.

“I can’t imagine anyone else I’d rather sing with,” she says.

Lyon calls playing “a blessed narcosis” and draws a parallel to old Greek pearl divers, crippled by the bends, who still head to the deep water because it’s the only place they feel normal.

“I can’t tell you how good it feels” to still be playing, Lyon says. And the re-emergence of Tombstone is particularly gratifying. “To know I can still honk ... it’s energizing. When I’m up there, I feel no pain. My back doesn’t hurt; my head doesn’t hurt. That place the band creates is still there.”

Bellaire has known Lyon for nearly 40 years, but has never been a bandmate of his. Still, he says, “I’ve always revered Kenny. … I really want people to see the breadth and depth of his talents.”

Lyon didn’t get the mainstream success of people such as Cafferty or Moser (a former member of Vanity 6), but “Kenny’s a big deal to the musicians he’s influenced and befriended and in many cases given a start to. …

“It’s going to be a testimonial dinner with amplifiers. And no food.”

An Evening with Ken Lyon will be held Saturday night at 8 at the Stadium Theatre Performing Arts Centre, 28 Monument Square, Main Street, Woonsocket. Tickets are $20 and $15; call (401) 762-4545.