MUSIC : Telecaster Master : Blues-guitar virtuoso Albert Collins will be playing in Isla Vista on Tuesday night.

Albert Collins has enough nicknames to impress even Chick Hearn. He’ll answer to “The Master of the Telecaster,” “The Ice Man,” “The Houston Twister,” “The Razor Blade” and, of course, the tried-but-true “Hey, you!” Besides all those nifty nouns, Collins attracts his share of adjectives as well. Musician magazine called him “the most powerful blues guitarist in the world.”

Collins will bring his bluesy pyrotechnics to the Anaconda Theatre in Isla Vista on Tuesday night for 15 bucks. And because he’s on the road for about nine months a year, he’s usually playing somewhere. Maybe he just wants to get out of Las Vegas, where it’s usually 10,000 degrees and full of tourists from Iowa wearing Hawaiian shirts. But not according to Collins, who seems to like his hometown.

“I bought a home here three years ago,” Collins said in a recent phone interview. “B. B. King is my neighbor--he asked me to move here. I was surprised to find that Las Vegas has a blues society. Usually, when you think about Las Vegas, you think about Wayne Newton, but it’s not like that.”

Nor is Texas, where Collins was born in 1932. He came from a musical family--his cousin was blues legend Lightnin’ Hopkins.

“I was raised up with jazz players, but blues-influenced jazz players. Lightnin’ Hopkins and John Lee Hooker influenced me from the beginning. When I picked up an electric guitar, I always wanted a big band sound, and I always liked a horn section. I try and create a dancin’ blues music.”

Since Collins first started picking on his Telecaster in the mid-’50s (with his fingers, no pick), he has recorded 14 albums, driven a million miles, made a lot of fans and compiled an impressive resume. He has played and recorded with an eclectic array of musicians such as Ike and Tina Turner, Frank Zappa, Duane Allman, Grand Funk, David Bowie, John Lee Hooker, Robert Cray, Johnny Copeland, Eric Clapton and George Thorogood. And he replaced Jimi Hendrix in Little Richard’s backup band.

“He was doing R & B, but he had it even then,” Collins said of Hendrix. “He really changed when he moved to the West Coast and got into that psychedelic stuff.”

Collins has two albums on the market and a third on the way. His newest one is the self-titled “Albert Collins,” which is all new material featuring female backup singers and the Uptown Horns. Also out is a two-CD collection of Collins’ Imperial recordings from the late-’60s. And due out any day is a re-release of an early Blue Thumb album, “Truckin’ With Albert Collins.” Still no Albert Collins dolls or lunch pails, but then again, still no zillion-selling albums.

“I used to wonder why I was so underrated for such a long time and why I couldn’t get that breakthrough I really needed,” Collins said. “Everybody has their time, some quicker than others. Like for B. B.--it’s finally starting to pay off for him. Part of it was the big record companies, who for a long time didn’t fool with no blues. Finally the young kids picked it up--all those 16-year-olds--and that’s what made the difference. I’ve been playing the same notes, the same thing for a long time, it’s just new to those who’ve never heard Albert Collins before.”

There are a lot of strange things in the music biz: T-shirts that cost more than concert tickets, bouncers who won’t let you dance, reggae bands in Japan and a truly American art form, the blues, being more popular outside this country.

“The blues have always been more popular in Europe than they are here,” Collins said. “It was that way before I ever went to Europe, and I’ve been touring over there every year since 1978. They appreciate American entertainers over there, and here they don’t want to hear the stuff. People here think blues is a down-and-out situation, but a millionaire can have the blues. That Delta blues stuff with a bottle of whiskey sitting in front of you--that’s not what it’s about.”

* WHERE AND WHEN

Albert Collins at the Anaconda Theatre, 935 Embarcadero del Norte, Isla Vista, 685-3112, Tuesday night. Doors open at 8 p.m., $15.