POP MUSIC / THOMAS K. ARNOLD : Mojo, Roper Swing Home After Wild First Leg of Tour

The first leg of Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper’s 1989 U.S. tour ends Saturday night with a homecoming performance at the Bacchanal in Kearny Mesa.

Since the tour began in early April, the San Diego loony- tunesmith and his washboard-strummin’ sidekick have played nearly 50 dates all over the country, twisting the basic blues structure several degrees toward mayhem in support of their fourth Enigma Records album, “Root Hog or Die.” The album, released in late March, includes the single “(619) 239-KING,” a follow-up to Nixon and Roper’s irreverent 1987 ode to the Elvis Presley mystique, “Elvis Is Everywhere.” The current single, named after the working phone number of Nixon’s Elvis hot line, continues to enjoy heavy play on MTV and has gotten the dynamic duo of depravity an unprecedented amount of national TV, radio and press exposure.

Last Sunday, Nixon called in from “somewhere in extremely flat West Texas.” The tour was almost over, he said, and he wanted to “give the folks back home” a progress report. Here’s what he had to say:

* In Kansas City, Mo., “somebody who had seen us the week before in Boulder drove all the way from Colorado to see us again, a distance of more than 600 miles.”

* In Columbia, Missouri, “some woman got on stage and mooned the audience. Not wanting to be upstaged, I did the same, and then I encouraged the audience to do so as well. And let me tell you, some of those people really should have kept their pants on.”

* In Bloomington, Ind., “we were in the middle of doing ‘Elvis is Everywhere’ when the entire audience started singing ‘Hound Dog,’ with absolutely no encouragement from me. It was a moment of pure Elvis-lation.”

Nixon said concerts in New York and along the Eastern seaboard “went all right, but once we crossed the Mason-Dixon line and got away from all those Yankees, things really picked up in terms of attendance, craziness and wildness.”

“Every place we played was packed,” he said. “It was a total freakout; people were singing along so loud I couldn’t even hear myself.”

More than 30 years ago, Ray Charles virtually invented soul music by welding together the inspirational fervor of gospel, the simple story lines of country, the tragic plaintiveness of blues and the rhythms and Big Band arrangements of jazz.

Between 1957 and 1971, the legendary singer-pianist-composer--who will appear Friday night at Humphrey’s on Shelter Island--scored no less than 32 Top 40 hits. Most of them are tear-jerkers like the nostalgically poignant “Georgia On My Mind,” which topped the national pop charts in 1960, and “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” a No. 1 hit two years later in which Charles assumes the role of a sad, broken man still in love with the woman who left him.

Charles broke out with “What’d I Say?”, his first million-seller. Released in 1959, the song finds him temporarily breaking out of character, from the man scorned to the man who scorns--and no one could have sounded meaner or more ornery than “Brother Ray” a-talkin’ to his woman.

Born in Albany, Ga., and raised in Greenville, Fla., Charles, now 59, started playing piano when he was 5. At the age of 6, he contracted glaucoma, which went untreated and eventually left him blind. He studied composition and learned to play various other instruments at the St. Augustine School for the Deaf and Blind. After his parents died, he dropped out of school and worked with various dance bands around Florida.

In 1947, with $600 in savings, Charles moved to Seattle and plyed the club scene for several years before relocating again to Los Angeles, New Orleans, and ultimately New York. In 1954, he signed with Atlantic Records, and three years later made his Top 40 debut with “Swanee River Rock (Talkin’ ‘Bout That River)”.

Charles’s hit streak continued into the 1970s, ending with 1971’s “Booty Butt.” Since then, he’s been recording intermittently and touring incessantly, enjoying particular success on the oldies circuit.In recent years he’s made something of a recording comeback, garnering better reviews than he’s gotten in some time.

LINER NOTES: Jerry Lee Lewis has bowed out of this summer’s Del Mar Fair’s grandstand concert line-up. According to a fair spokeswoman, the rock ‘n’ roll legend canceled his two June 17 concerts because of his involvement in the prerelease publicity campaign for a new movie about his life, “Great Balls of Fire” (in which Mojo Nixon, incidentally, is cast as Lewis’ drummer). Appearing in the Killer’s place at the 15,000-seat grandstand will be the Drifters at 2 p.m. and Bo Diddley at 7:30 p.m.

Just added to the eighth annual Concerts by the Bay series at Humphrey’s: Larry Carlton, Aug. 25; the Rippingtons, Sept. 8, and a second show by Kenny G, Sept. 28. . . . Tickets go on sale this weekend for three concerts at San Diego State University’s Open Air Theater: Friday at 3 p.m. for Love and Rockets, July 19; Friday at 4 p.m. for Tesla, Great White and Kix, July 9, and Saturday at 10 a.m. for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and the Replacements, July 25.