John Raitt, 75, Performs for Contemporary Crowd : Concert: Seal Beach Leisure World residents respond warmly as singer runs through selection of show tunes.

The first time Blanche Lack saw John Raitt sing, they were both eighth-graders at a Fullerton grammar school.

“His voice was already so much better than the other boys’,” Lack recounted Saturday. “I was trying to think what the name of the song was, but after 60 years I forget.”

Clutching a copy of her high school yearbook (Fullerton Union High School, class of ‘35), Lack stopped backstage Saturday to visit with Raitt before he sang to some 2,000 of their contemporaries at Seal Beach Leisure World, as part of a summer concert series in an outdoor amphitheater at the retirement community.

The crowd, made up of Leisure World residents and their guests, responded warmly as Raitt ran through a selection of tunes from musicals in which he’s performed over the years, from “Oklahoma,” his first big break, through such shows as “Carousel,” “Pajama Game,” “Camelot” and “Man of La Mancha.”

The 75-year-old singer, whose one-hour show was billed as a “musical autobiography,” further regaled the audience with tales from throughout his still-active career. For instance, he told a series of anecdotes about what he called his most difficult performance--playing “dead” for five minutes during “Carousel.” There was the time when a large spider crawled across his face, he recounted, and another time when a boy in the front row sprayed him with a squirt gun while he lay on stage.

Raitt was born on his grandfather’s farm in Santa Ana, only about five miles from Saturday’s concert. He now lives in Pacific Palisades; the last time he had performed locally was October, in “South Pacific” at Fullerton’s Plummer Auditorium, where he had first sung in a high school production of “Desert Song” in 1935.

His fame has been overtaken of late by that of his daughter, blues and rock singer Bonnie Raitt, who has been racking up album sales and Grammy awards. Leisure World would seem to be one place where Dad’s name still would carry more weight, but a mention of Bonnie during the concert Saturday drew a generous helping of applause.

He handles his daughter’s success with good grace and fatherly pride, and with an ac knowledgment that it isn’t hurting his own career. A concert he and Bonnie performed with the Boston Pops in May, broadcast last month on PBS, “reactivated my whole career in some ways,” he said during a brief interview Saturday. “It took me two years to convince (Bonnie) it was her idea.”

Another recent high point was the release on CDs of two of his albums from the mid-’50s, “Highlights of Broadway” and “Under Open Skies,” on Capitol Records. “I’m getting reviewed for things I did 30 years ago,” he noted.

Though still in good singing form, he has cut back his performing schedule to about 20 dates a year. “I do only what I want to these days,” he said. He performed Saturday with a lone piano accompanist.

While he doesn’t usually perform at retirement communities--most don’t have large enough halls--Raitt figured that the audience at Leisure World wasn’t too much different from that at most of his gigs: “I was told once the average age is 72, so I got ‘em by three years.”

Raitt is easily the biggest name on the roster for this summer’s concert series, which runs Thursday and Saturday nights from mid-June through mid-September. The concerts, which usually feature local big bands and pops performers, are open free to residents of the private community and their guests. Leisure World in Seal Beach has about 9,000 residents.

One of them, Sydnie Weiss, said she comes “to see every show that I can, but especially this one.” Calling herself a longtime fan of Raitt, she said she had seen him perform “many, many years ago.”

Weiss confessed to an additional motive for attending the show--to catch the opening act, comic John Wing. Weiss, 76, said she took up stand-up comedy herself about 10 years ago and has performed in local clubs. She pulled out her business card: “Grandma of the comediennes.”