Group Efforts Don’t Mean Soloist Has Changed His Tune : Blues: John Hammond prefers to go it alone, but he doesn’t squander his ‘great fortune’ of working with the greats. He plays tonight in O.C.

For some 30 years, with nothing more than his guitar, his voice, a harmonica and the stomp of his foot, John Hammond has moved audiences with blue tales of love, lust and heartbreak.

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Though he has appeared and recorded with various bands over the years, his reputation as a passionate conveyor of the Delta blues tradition has been built on solo appearances, on his ability to touch listeners with the poetry of the blues masters and the simple tools of their trade.

Since coming to the Pointblank/Charisma label in 1992, though, Hammond’s recording has taken a more urban turn, focusing on group presentation. His first album for the label, “Got Love If You Want It,” found him sharing the microphone with John Lee Hooker, Little Charlie and the Night Cats and his producer J.J. Cale among others. His latest, “Trouble No More,” has only a single cut that features Hammond working solo.

Does this signal some change in direction for the 51-year-old bluesman?

“It’s hard to say,” he answered on the phone from a Sunset Boulevard hotel room. “I’m still a solo artist primarily, but I’ve also had the great fortune to work with whomever I wanted. When I had a chance to record (“Trouble No More”) with Cale producing again, I thought it would be great to use (Little) Charlie Baty and the band. Everything just clicked and I felt we did such strong tunes together.”

But working solo remains his chosen way to hit the road.

“As a solo, I can do so much more, travel farther, reach more parts of the world. My strongest suit is that of a solo blues artist. And there aren’t many out there doing that any more. It puts me in a unique position.”

Hammond does travel farther than most, doing about 200 shows a year. He began 1994 in Europe, went to Australia and Brazil, and last week made appearances at the second annual Crossroads Blues Festival in Greenwood, Miss., and at the House of Blues club in New Orleans. He’ll play tonight at the San Juan Capistrano Library as part of its Multicultural Performing and Visual Arts series.

Playing solo, Hammond said, “is the essence of the blues. The artists I’ve admired tremendously--Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters--all began solo before moving into the combo format. I’ve worked all kinds of shows with Wolf and Muddy and other Chicago-style artists who all said, ‘Keep doing what you’re doing. It’s the real thing.’ ”

He says his real idols are “the solo troubadours of the ‘30s and ‘40s,” and he thinks that when everything is working right, he can be much more effective alone than with a band.

“But I love the fact that I have the chance to work in either format.” For one thing, he relishes working with his heroes. One of them, legendary R & B singer Charles Brown (the fabled composer of “Merry Christmas Baby”), not only contributed the title song to Hammond’s new album but played piano on a couple of cuts.

Hammond remembers buying “one of Charles’ albums around 1957, where he does ‘Black Night,’ ‘Driftin’ Blues’ and ‘Trouble Blues.’ It’s great music. I always hoped I would get to hear him play one day, but never in my wildest dreams did I think I would record with him.”

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He met Brown for the first time two years ago at the Montreux Jazz Festival where Brown was appearing with Bonnie Raitt. “He said he’d heard me do ‘Driftin’ Blues’ with John Lee Hooker and liked it,” Hammond recalled, “so I said flippantly, ‘I’d love to record with you sometime.’ And he said we should! So I took him up on it.”

“Trouble No More” also finds Hammond singing a tune called “Nasty Swing” by Cliff Carlisle, a hillbilly singer from the ‘30s and ‘40s. It marks the first time Hammond can be heard yodeling on a record. But don’t try to tell him it’s a country song.

“Cliff Carlisle called himself a blues singer. It’s just that his record company wouldn’t acknowledge it. There have always been white blues singers, but the racism of the United States has kept them separate. The whites weren’t allowed to call themselves blues artists and the blacks weren’t allowed to call themselves country artists. This kind of racism still exists. It’s pathetic in this day and age.”

Though the scope of Hammond’s knowledge of music and the depth of his opinions are expansive (few have done as much to introduce the rock generation to the blues tradition), he doesn’t consider himself a scholar. “I’ve never claimed to be an authority of any kind. The things I know are from my own experience, having played and worked in the same format as a lot of the great artists. I learned in the tradition. And I am a fan.”

A son of the late record producer John Henry Hammond, who was instrumental in the careers of musicians from Benny Goodman and Billie Holiday to Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, Hammond began following music while barely in his teens.

“When I was a teen-ager in the ‘50s, on the radio you could hear blues, rock and R&B.; I gravitated toward the stuff that had more intensity to it. Instead of Elvis, I was more into Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry. Instead of Pat Boone, I was into Eddie Cochran.

“In 1957, I picked up a country blues album on Folkways, a sampler of artists from the ‘30s that included Leroy Carr, Blind Boy Fuller, Willie McTell and others. It really opened my eyes. I saw it as the roots to the rock ‘n’ roll I heard on the radio, the most direct and incredible stuff I’d ever heard. Not long after that, I got a guitar myself and started fooling around.”

His father’s musical connections had little direct bearing on young Hammond’s interests; his parents had divorced when he was 5. But John the elder’s influence was felt. “He loved music in general and had a great ear. He instilled in me the intensity, the passion for the music.” Some have seen parallels in the two Hammonds’ careers, as the son has served a vehicle for the discovery of the Band and Jimi Hendrix. Hammond dismisses these assumptions. “I may have introduced (the members of the Band) to Dylan, but they were great before I met them.”

And Hendrix? “He was playing at a place called the Cafe Wha (in Greenwich Village) and a friend of mine said ‘you’ve got to hear this guy, he’s great.’ I was playing at the Gaslight and Hendrix had just been fired from Curtis Knight’s band and was stranded in New York. He and I met between gigs and he asked me if he could play. I was delighted.”

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A two-week gig followed at the Cafe Au Go Go, where a number of luminaries heard the unknown guitarist. Among them was Chas Chandler of the Animals, who ended up sponsoring the trip to England that resulted in the first recording by the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

“He was ready,” said Hammond. “There was nothing I did for him.”

But there is no denying how much Hammond has done during his career for the blues tradition.

“I think the tradition is in great shape,” he said. “The strength of the blues in general, in terms of the musical idiom, will never go away. There was a concerted effort in the ‘70s and ‘80s by the big record labels and the radio stations to wipe it out. But small labels were formed that specialize in the blues. And they were so effective in making the music available that they had to be acknowledged. Today there are blues fanatics all over the world. It may not be top of the pops, but it will never be denied.”

* John Hammond plays tonight at 7 and 9 at the San Juan Capistrano Regional Library, 31495 El Camino Real, San Juan Capistrano. $5. (714) 493-1752.