‘I Don’t Know What I Got but They Like What I Do’ : Blues: After 50 years of performing, veteran singer-guitarist John Lee Hooker looks forward to taking it easy. He plays the Variety on Thursday.

“I wonder why they all want to know how old I am?” mused bluesman John Lee Hooker. “Every interview they want to know.”

The reason is pretty clear. With the recent death of Willie Dixon, Hooker, 71, is perhaps the senior surviving titan of the blues and one of the last living links to the pre-rock foundations of the music.

But that’s not exactly something he considers an achievement.

“You keep living, you’re gonna get old,” he said, speaking by phone from his home in Redwood City, near San Francisco. “If you don’t get old, you’re gonna die young. And you don’t want to die young.”

He says that he’s taken good care of himself. “I quit drinking and smoking,” he said in his sly, rough but resonant voice. “I gave up everything but women.”

Still, age is on Hooker’s mind. After more than 50 years of dogging the blues road--he still plays three or four concerts a month, including one Thursday at the Variety--the Godfather of the Boogie is planning to retire next year.

“Kinda,” he qualified. “I don’t have to, I’m just gonna do it, just go out and perform once in a while. Probably keep recording, let my records do it, and just sit home and sop the gravy.”

There should be plenty of gravy to sop. The last few years have been the peak--at least in terms of fame--of a career that began when he ran away from home in Clarksdale, Miss., as a teen-ager. His 1989 album “The Healer,” his first after a long recording layoff, was a remarkable comeback on all levels. Featuring appearances by such young worshipers as Bonnie Raitt, Robert Cray, Carlos Santana and Los Lobos, the album was a commercial hit, and his duet with Raitt on his old song “I’m in the Mood” took a Grammy Award for best blues performance.

A follow-up released last year, “Mr. Lucky,” is just as strong, with guests including Santana, Cray, Keith Richards, Johnny Winter, Ry Cooder and, on a haunting version of the Hooker classic “I Cover the Waterfront,” Van Morrison. The album is nominated for best traditional blues Grammy.

Rhino Records recently released a two-CD compilation of Hooker recordings from 1948 through 1990, including the lusty likes of “Boom Boom” (made familiar to rock fans through the Animals’ version), “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer” (later recorded by George Thorogood) and Hooker’s signature song and first hit, 1948’s “Boogie Chillen’.”

Raitt, Cooder, Cray, Albert Collins and Charlie Musselwhite also joined Hooker for a concert at a Mill Valley club last month, which was taped by the BBC to be shown in Britain in March, and possibly in the United States later this year. Additionally, Capitol recently issued a two-CD set of “Hooker ‘n’ Heat,” Hooker’s 1969 collaboration with the band Canned Heat.

As those lineups indicate, few bluesmen have been as involved with their students as Hooker.

“I don’t like to say it but it’s true: I’ve influenced more rock ‘n’ roll singers than any other blues musician,” he said. “I don’t know why. I don’t know what I got. But they like what I do . . . and it makes me more known.”

As much as he values the fame and money the devotees have brought him, the relationships with the young musicians themselves are what Hooker treasures most. When he talks about his music, he just delivers pat lines that he’s probably used as much as his patented guitar boogie riffs. But when he talks about his younger musician friends, he really lights up.

“I’m proud of it,” he said. “I never knew what a legend was, but they say I am one. These great musicians look up to me, and I look up to them. Bonnie Raitt, Carlos Santana, down the line. They’re great, great musicians, and we love each other--not just for the music, but as humans.”

But if you want a topic that really lights up Hooker, try baseball. Though he’s lived in the Bay Area for 22 years, he’s a Dodger fan who’s looking forward to seeing the team’s powerful lineup in action this year.

“I’m a baseball freak,” he said.

A curious twist came when he talked about a few major-leaguers who he thinks are too old to cut it--though they’re about 30 years his junior.

“But we’re in a different league,” he said. “I can play (the blues) till I’m 100, but you can’t stay in baseball. What I do, you just sit and sing, ain’t nobody hitting you. You just sit and play the blues.”