‘Iceman’ Working Hard to Make Blues Hot : R&B;: After 37 years, Albert Collins, playing at the Coach House tonight, is finally getting wide recognition.

He’s called “the Iceman” and his band the Icebreakers. His records, stringing from 1958 to the present, have included “The Freeze,” “Frosty,” “Cold Snap” and “Ice Pickin’.” And Albert Collins has a cold.

Or maybe it’s the flu. “I feel lousy enough,” the 57-year-old bluesman said from an L.A. hotel room. “This last weekend was kind of chilly and damp up in San Francisco, and I slipped up and didn’t take care of myself.” Collins said he has missed few shows in his 37 years as a performer--”I don’t like to lay down on an illness”--and already is persevering under a far heavier load: Last week Collins and his band members lost longtime friend and trumpet player Gabriel Fleming to a massive heart attack.

“That’s been hard on all of us,” Collins said. “It happened so quick. We’d known each other since back in the early ‘60s. It affects us mentally and it affects the music too a little bit. Sometimes it helps to play. But this week it’s just been a real shock.”

Collins has attained a higher profile than most of his fellow bluesmen through years of hard touring and through fans such as David Bowie and Stevie Ray Vaughan touting his playing. It’s a recognition he has pursued with a dogged persistence.

“Every time I’m on stage, I’m trying hard to get my music across to the people,” he said. “I feel I’ve been underrated for so long, I’m just trying to get across. I might not get to be a household name, but I hope so. B.B. (King) got across to both black and white, all types of people. That’s the goal I’m working on.”

In November, Collins was the biggest winner at the W.C. Handy Awards, the blues world’s top honors, presented by the Memphis-based Blues Foundation. He took Contemporary Male Blues Artist, Blues Instrumentalist-Guitar, he and his band won Best Blues Band, and his 1987 “Showdown” collaboration with Robert Cray and Johnny Copeland was inducted into the Foundation’s hall of fame. Collins now holds a total of 12 Handys.

“I was glad to get those. They mean a whole lot, just as much to me as a Grammy (which Collins also has for the “Showdown” disc). It makes me want to keep on playing because that’s what I’ve tried to achieve through life, to have something to show for my music, something to say that I worked for.”

Collins, who was born in a cabin in Leona, Tex., in 1932, was influenced by John Lee Hooker, Lightnin’ Hopkins (Collins’ cousin) and, later, by sax player Illinois Jacquet, B.B. King, T-Bone Walker and Guitar Slim. Seeing the latter provided Collins with some of his sense of showmanship.

Part of Guitar Slim’s act involved leaving the stage with a long cord trailing from his guitar, on one legendary occasion reportedly exiting a club, boarding a bus and riding for a block while still soloing. Collins has made the guitar stroll a regular part of his show, wading nightly into crowds, though he avoids public transportation.

The preoccupation with arctic temperatures began in 1958, when a fogged windshield led to a band discussion of frost, which carried over when they were titling their compositions. The Iceman moniker was reinforced by Collins’ astringent, cutting guitar style.

Through the mid-’60s Collins’ music was his second job. Even after his 1962 instrumental “Frosty” became a million-seller, he continued to drive trucks for a living, perhaps because he never saw any royalties from the record.

Championed by the blues-rock band Canned Heat in the late ‘60s, Collins was introduced to rock audiences. In the years following, he worked as an opener for Grand Funk Railroad, Three Dog Night and other acts that fell by the wayside, while Collins worked on, often without a record contract.

His fortunes took a major turn in 1986, when he performed before millions on the televised Live Aid concert. Since then, he has done recordings with Bowie, Jack Bruce and avant-garde jazz composer John Zorn, and appeared in both a Seagram’s wine cooler commercial and the film “Adventures in Babysitting.”

“That came through Bruce Willis,” Collins recounted. “He sat in with me one night at the Music Machine. And he told me, ‘Man, I’m going to get you some TV work.’ When some big-time guy like that tells you something, I figured he’d probably just forget about me. But two weeks later, I got the commercial and then did ‘Adventures in Babysitting.’ ”

Such exposure and the reawakened interest in the blues created by such younger players as Vaughan, Cray and the Fabulous Thunderbirds have kept Collins a busy man.

“I just hope it keeps on being popular from now on,” he said. “It’s been so up and down for so many years. People used to turn their noses up at it. I try to give them a real show when I perform, so they might leave thinking a little bit different about the blues.”

Albert Collins and the Icebreakers play today at 9 p.m. at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. Tickets: $15. Information: (714) 496-8930.