Billy Swan Is Not One to Duck a Good Cause : Fund-raiser: The singer and songwriter of ‘I Can Help’ fame will join several other performers for a benefit for the O.C. Musicians Foundation.

When Billy Swan wrote the lyrics “It would sure do me good to do you good, I can help” to his 1974 No. 1 hit “I Can Help,” he wasn’t intending to set forth a personal credo.

Nevertheless, on Sunday Swan is helping once again, playing in his third benefit concert to aid Orange County musicians. And he doesn’t even live here.

Swan will join Greg Topper, Dick Dale, Derek & the Diamonds, Dick Dodd and other Orange County-based musicians at the Righteous Brothers Hop in Fountain Valley for a show to raise money to launch the Orange County Musicians Foundation.

The foundation, organized by popular county pianist Topper, was created to provide grants to local musicians who may need help through medical emergencies. Topper realized the need for such a foundation after holding two previous benefits (in which Swan participated) to help stricken players.

Swan’s reasons for driving down from his Sherman Oaks home include his friendship with Topper, his family ties to Orange County (his wife, Marlu, is from Yorba Linda) and, as he explained by phone from his home recently: “Well, I just think it’s nice. It feels good to be helping some other musician, because it’s a tough way to make a living.”

Swan, 49, has experienced a bit of that himself. He has penned two certifiable pop classics, “I Can Help” and “Lover Please,” a No. 7 hit for Clyde McPhatter in 1962, which Swan wrote when he was 16. But, rather than open doors, he’s often found those tunes are the only ones people want to hear.

“I’m really grateful for those songs,” he said. “When you have songs that people know and like, you know you’ve got something going for you there. And I always like singing them. But sometimes it’s frustrating. It’s ‘OK, let’s hear your hit--just get to your hit.’ And, no, I want you to hear this other stuff I’ve got. I’ve written maybe 400 or 500 songs, and maybe 10 of them I’d rank up there with the two hits. Actually, the stuff I’ve done in the last couple years I really feel good about.”

He hasn’t had an album of his own out since 1981, and the Los Angeles-based group he works with, Black Tie, hasn’t has a release since 1985. Even his friend Kris Kristofferson--whose group the Borderlords also lists Swan as a member--has been without a contract of late.

All of which makes it more than a pleasure for Swan that he has a new album due out in the summer. The album, to be called “Bop to Be,” is coming out on a new Memphis-based label, Music South, run by Gary Hardy, the current owner of the legendary Sun Studio, where Elvis Presley, Howlin’ Wolf, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and numerous others got their starts.

Hardy, curiously, made his fortune distributing karaoke machines. Players on the album include saxophonist Ace Cannon and Memphis drumming great J. M. Van Eaton, the Sun session drummer who played on Lewis’ “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On” and other classics.

Swan is already on Music South’s debut album, called “Sun Studio Revue,” which also includes Phoebe Lewis (Jerry Lee’s daughter) and R & B legend Rufus Thomas. The now-septuagenarian Thomas was also on the first Sun recording four decades ago, as well as the debut disc from the Stax studio, Memphis’ other great label. Originally Hardy had planned to name his label Stun, combining Stax and Sun.

Swan met Hardy while working at the studio on the soundtrack for the Jerry Lee biographical film “Great Balls of Fire.” “We just took a liking to each other, and one thing led to another,” he said.

Of his own album, Swan said: “It’s a little different than what’s out there, but I like that. It’s pretty basic, and I like that too, because so many things that are out now have so much rhythm and technology on them.

“About the only place I can see my album catching on is in country, because pop music has changed so much I don’t think I could be called that anymore. My music has always been more of the ‘50s-type music, which is what country is, basically. Country also focuses more on the song, and I’m a songwriter.”

One of the album’s cuts, he said, is called “Down by the River,” a song that relates memories of growing up by a river, which is just what Swan did, along the Mississippi in Cape Girardeau, Mo.

He followed the river to Memphis in the early ‘60s after bandleader Bill Black expressed an interest in recording “Lover Please.” Things never worked out with Black, and by 1963 Swan had moved on to Nashville. He worked for a while as a janitor at Columbia’s Nashville studios, passing that job on to the then equally unknown Kristofferson.

“It’s odd, I was working there the first week Dylan was recording ‘Blonde on Blonde,’ and Kris was there for the second week,” he said.

Swan worked off and on with Kristofferson from 1970 to 1976 and has been with him steadily ever since, although the group now tours only about two months a year.

Working with a cause-minded singer such as Kristofferson means Swan is no stranger to benefit concerts.

“He really feels deeply about that stuff,” he said. “Kris doesn’t just jump into causes, he really looks into them. I’ve differed with him on some things, but then he explains it, things that I’m not aware of, like El Salvador and the government doing this and that behind our back, and you can see where he’s coming from. But on the surface you just want to say: ‘Hey, why do you wanna back these people? Aren’t they our enemy?’ ”

Before his own success with “I Can Help,” Swan produced three albums for Tony Joe White, yielding the hit “Polk Salad Annie.” When it was released in 1974, “I Can Help” went to No. 1 on both the pop and country charts.

Swan followed that with a minor hit in England covering Elvis’ “Don’t Be Cruel.” Elvis responded by recording “I Can Help.” Swan has a fairly unusual souvenir from that session.

Swan was visiting with producer Felton Jarvis and some other Elvis associates one day, “and they had a big belt there of Elvis’ and they said, ‘Bill could you use this?’ And I said, ‘Damn, I’d never wear something like that. Get me a pair of Elvis’ socks sometime.’ I wish the hell I’d said ‘a jumpsuit’ now. Three months later, Felton walks in, opens up his briefcase and says, ‘Here.’ It was the socks Elvis wore when he cut ‘I Can Help.’ Red West had gotten them and given them to Felton.”

And has Swan ever tried them on?

“Oh yeah, I had to do that. They really smelled good when I first got them, but I had to wash them eventually.”

The Orange County Musicians Foundation’s All-Star Benefit, featuring Dick Dale & the Del-Tones, Billy Swan, Greg Topper, Derek & the Diamonds, Dick Dodd, Bob Gully and others, will take place Sunday from 1 to 7 p.m. at the Righteous Brothers Hop, 18774 Brookhurst St., Fountain Valley. Tickets: $20. Information: (714) 963-2366.