MUSIC : Chung King Blues : Guitarist-singer Alan Mirikitani and his band will display a crossover sound, which includes rock and pop elements, at a North Hollywood club.

Bluesman Alan Mirikitani doesn’t talk much about the earlier days of his musical career, or about much of anything from more than four years ago, before he was transformed into something called B.B. Chung King.

He’s been playing guitar and singing on the local blues-and-rock circuit for at least 15 years now, proudly immersing himself in the disparate blues styles of delta, Chicago and Los Angeles jump. Yet he sees himself as a virtual outcast from that scene, breaking from the blues purists by adding elements of rock and pop into the heavy blues mix of his band, B. B. Chung King and the Screaming Buddah Heads.

“I just wanted to bring the blues influence to a younger audience,” Mirikitani says. “I wanted to turn them on just like Cream and Eric Clapton turned me on to the blues. Cream was a pop-rock band, but they did a lot of blues, and they turned me on to Willie Dixon.”

Some high-volume examples of his band’s soulful crossover sound will be on display Wednesday night during a guest performance at the Hot Guitarists Contest at FM Station in North Hollywood. Mirikitani has worked as a judge for the competition, helping choose the finalists for the weekly showcase of emerging players.

His band’s 40-minute set, club owner Filthy McNasty says, should demonstrate “to these guitar players that’s how good you can end up. He’s one of the hot guitar players around, and he just kind of motivates them.”

Still, this has left Mirikitani at odds with some blues purists for whom the only accurate presentation of the blues must be through the same antiquated equipment used by the old masters. The aim there, he complains, is to re-create every nuance of the original records, much as certain club bands perform precise, though empty, versions of the current Top 40.

“It ain’t authentic to begin with,” Mirikitani says. “Most of those old cats are dead. The only thing we can’t perform live are the pops and clicks on the record. And I’ve known guys that have actually thought about subtly putting that out through the PA system.”

In searching for the members of his Screaming Buddah Heads four years ago, Mirikitani went beyond the blues scene and found players of mixed backgrounds in blues, rock and heavy metal. “I wanted that younger influence on my sound, to keep it fresh,” says Mirikitani, who grew up in Downey and now lives in Burbank.

“I want to have a whole new younger generation get hip to the blues so that it will continue on. After all, it is one of the only true American art forms. And I’d like to see it stay alive.”

Still, Mirikitani has yet to persuade a major American record company to make the same kind of commitment to the music of B. B. Chung King, which is the alias he earned after playing a particularly moving, B. B. King-like guitar solo. He suspects that there’s some hesitation in part because he is a Japanese-American making music traditionally played by black and white musicians.

“There hasn’t been an Asian rock star,” he says. “The only place where I’ve seen it has been in rap. There are a couple of Asian guys in rap, which I think is a major breakthrough.”

He adds: “Because I’m the front guy, it’s like, ‘Gee, is a kid in the Bible Belt going to get this?’ I think the kids are way ahead of the record-company people when it comes to that issue. It doesn’t matter.”

Even so, B. B. Chung King and the Screaming Buddah Heads have had some notable successes these last few years. The band’s “Keep It to Yourself” was included on the soundtrack to the Joe Pesci film “My Cousin Vinny.” There’s also been occasional airplay on the rock station KLOS-FM, and Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash, among other musicians, has joined the band on stage.

“The kind of music that I play pretty much stays around,” Mirikitani says. “That’s why Clapton and Bonnie Raitt’s been around a long time. It’s very soulful; you can always dance to it and it’s real music.”

Where and When What: B. B. Chung King and the Screaming Buddah Heads. Location: FM Station, 11700 Victory Blvd., North Hollywood. Hours: About 10:30 p.m. Wednesday during the Hot Guitarists Contest. Price: $5. Call: (818) 769-2220.