Hubert Sumlin is part of the Experience Hendrix Tour, Friday at the Providence Performing Arts Center.

ASSOCIATED PRESS / JASON DECROW

Hubert Sumlin, 77, remembers meeting Jimi Hendrix for the first time in the late ’60s, when Hendrix was just getting The Experience together in London.

“He was just a genius in my book,” Sumlin says of Hendrix, and Sumlin ought to know. He played guitar in Howlin’ Wolf’s band for decades, recording such Chess Records classics as “Wang Dang Doodle” and “Killing Floor,” and when Hendrix recorded the latter song, Sumlin got to play with him and know him.

“This guy was before his time,” Sumlin says of Hendrix. “He could have done anything he wanted to. And if he was living now, oh Lord! I don’t know, but I got an idea.”

But Sumlin agrees that Hendrix never strayed far from being a blues player, with the groove and the precision to keep his music accessible as well as flashy. “He did what he wanted, and he did what the people wanted. . . . He was so right in what he was doing. He was something else, and you had to work with him.”

After Wolf died in 1976, Sumlin laid relatively low, playing but not recording much until the mid-’80s. Recently he’s been stepping into the limelight; his last record, 2002’s About Them Shoes, featured an all-star lineup that included Keith Richards and Eric Clapton, but it was better than the usual cameo-laden blues disc, with Sumlin’s unimpeachable credibility anchoring the proceedings.

Sumlin, 77, agrees that his star has been shining brighter in recent years. “It seems like it, and it looks like it to me. . .

“They’ve been working the old man pretty hard. I got liver problems, heart problems, but I’m beginning to feel good — better than I used to. I believe I’ve got a few more years, and I believe I’m here for a reason. And I’m going to do what I can.”

And he was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame this year, though Sumlin says he didn’t know it at the time. He was called to come to Memphis, but he says he thought it was only to perform. Not only was he inducted, he says, “they put a marker down where I was born. I thought that was it for me! I thought I was going to have another heart attack!”

In Sumlin’s long career, it’s one of many rewards that don’t necessarily include money. “I think I’m a millionaire in the beginning, and I got nothing. [Now] I don’t need it!”

He finishes the conversation by saying, “Tell everyone old Hubert’s coming!” You got it.

Hubert Sumlin is part of the Experience Hendrix Tour, which includes Billy Cox, Mitch Mitchell, Buddy Guy, Brad Whitford, Doyle Bramhall II, “Whipper” Layton, Jonny Lang, Kenny Wayne Shepard and more, at the Providence Performing Arts Center, 220 Weybosset St., Providence, tomorrow night at 7:30. Tickets are $79.50, $59.50 and $39.50; call (401) 421-2787 or go to www.ppacri.org.

Junior Watson has made his name as one of the busiest guitar players in the West Coast blues scene, but he says that his show this weekend will include songs from the new direction he’s headed in.

Watson is best known for his work as a sideman with luminaries such as Rod Piazza’s Mighty Flyers, Charlie Musselwhite, The Hollywood Fats Band and the ’80s rendition of Canned Heat. His solo albums are few and far between (his last being 2002’s I Had a Genie and the previous coming in 1994), but he says he’ll head into the studio next month for a new album he hopes will come out in February.

“It’s just easier being a sideman; it’s a lot less hassle,” Watson says. “For my own projects, I can’t get anyone interested in putting out the records, so I do it myself. So I take my time.”

That leads to music he likes better, Watson says, but that freedom also can result in a scattershot process.

“I’ll get two or three instrumentals, or a vocal, that I write, and then I’ll change my mind in the middle of it all and want to do some sort of spy song — I get on these kicks, you know? So it’s hard to focus in.”

That’s a clue to the focus of Watson’s new material.

Watson promises that this weekend’s show will showcase the West Coast swing blues he’s best known for: “I say it’s the old sound from the ’50s and late ’40s, when the Texas guys (such as Pee Wee Graydon) migrated here . . . because of working on the docks and what have you.

“I say it’s a swing-type thing . . . the East Coast has always been more of a hard shuffle. It’s a whole other attitude.”

“We’ll do some of the regular stuff . . . boogaloo stuff, to feature Gordon (saxophonist Gordon Beadle), but they’re going to be obscure stuff.”

But there will also be hints of Watson’s more current fascination — instrumental rock of the early ’60s. He mentions the Swedish band The Spotnicks, who were known for Ventures-style covers of rock and pop songs and a then-futuristic look, as an example.

If it all sounds as though Watson is a mere retro machine, he says that’s something he tests himself on all the time. “I try to do things out of the box.” For example, one of the virtues of going to instrumental rock is “I’m learning it and [the band is] learning it [at the same time], which makes it different from playing basic blues-type stuff.”

When telling his band what songs they’re going to do, he says he instructs them to “Learn it, but don’t learn it quite exactly like that, because you have to adjust to me a little.”

It’s all part of the “quirky, oddball deal I’ve got going,” Watson says. “If you hear the original, then you hear mine — I do it all the time, I go, ‘wait a minute . . .’ and then I’ll learn part of the original [again] and go, ‘Nah; I better just keep it my way.’ ”

Junior Watson plays at Chan’s, 267 Main St., Woonsocket, Saturday night at 8 p.m. Admission is $12; call (401) 765-1900.

Hanson continues their Walk Around the World Tour tonight at Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel, 79 Washington St., at 7 p.m. Yeah, Hanson-mania might’ve gotten a little much there in the late ’90s, but you try writing something as cool as “MMMBop” when you’re 16. Or 13. Or 11. Their latest record, The Walk, doesn’t exactly break new ground, but it’s got several solid pop winners. Worth a look. Tickets are $30, $35 for reserved seating; call (401) 331-5876 or go to www.etix.com.

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rmassimo@projo.com