Music

There’s no way celebrated blues singer Joe Williams can make it through this year without a fair amount of deja vu.

He recently shared the stage at the University of Idaho with Lionel Hampton, the acclaimed vibraphonist and Swing Era bandleader.

It was with Hampton’s band, back in 1943, that Williams’ vocal chords got their first national workout.

He’s recording an album and playing several concert dates--including shows at the Hollywood Bowl and New York’s Carnegie Hall--with the Count Basie Orchestra.

It was while singing with the Count Basie Orchestra in 1955 that Williams scored the first--and biggest--recording smash of his career: “Every Day I Have the Blues,” which also marked the Basie orchestra’s return to the pop charts after an absence of nearly 15 years.

And Williams is playing most of the dates on his current tour, which runs through December and includes a stop in San Diego Sunday at 7:30 p.m. at Balboa Park’s Starlight Bowl, for the Showtime Under the Stars festival, which also features soul balladeer Marlena Shaw and local jazz mainstays Joe Marillo, Ella Ruth Piggee and Hollis Gentry’s Neon.

Williams’ hand-picked quartet--Norman Simmons on piano, Bob Badgley on bass, Gerryck King on drums and Henry Johnson on guitar--is similar in sound to the quintet he assembled in 1961, when he left Basie after six years to go solo.

“There is one big difference . . . between the past and the present,” Williams said with a laugh. “Back then, I used to be out on the road about 45 weeks a year.

“But now, I’m only touring about 35.”

That’s not to say he’s any less busy, however. Most of those 10 weeks are spent filming “The Cosby Show,” the top-rated television sitcom in which Williams frequently appears as “Grandpa Al.”

Acting is not entirely foreign to Williams. He had a bit part in the 1970 movie “The Moonshine War” with Alan Alda, and has also guested on an episode of “Lou Grant.”

But aside from those occasional flirtations with TV and film, Williams has always directed most of his affections toward his true love: singing the blues, from racy rhythm-and-blues dance numbers to soulful pop and jazz ballads.

“For me, the blues are very fulfilling, because you’re basically talking about life itself,” Williams said. “You express your feelings for life and your love of it and how it affects those around you, from a very personal standpoint.

“And if it’s like that for you, others can feel those exact same feelings and emotions if you express them right--which is something I always try to do.”

Like many blues singers, Williams was raised in Chicago and owes much of his early musical education to such South Side regulars as Pha Terrell, Dan Grissom, Herb Jeffries and, later, Nat “King” Cole.

In the late 1930s and early ‘40s, Williams sang with several regional touring big bands--including one led by reedman Coleman Hawkins--before embarking on his first national tour with Lionel Hampton in 1943.

Since then, he has performed and recorded with the likes of Dinah Washington, Andy Kirk, Pete Johnson, Albert Ammons and, most significantly, Count Basie, who once called Williams his “No. 1 son.”

Williams has also been named “best blues singer” in the prestigious Downbeat magazine poll an unprecedented five times and performed at virtually every major international jazz festival in the last 30 years.

It is understandable, therefore, that if Williams could relive his entire life, he wouldn’t change a thing.

“If I had it to do all over again,” he said, “I would do exactly that--do it all over again. I’ve had a ball, so why mess with a good thing?”