MUSIC : A Lifelong Affair With the Blues : The harmonica master, who game to L.A. from Mississippi in 1958, will play at the Underground in Santa Barbara.

For veteran blues harmonica master Johnny Dyer, the good ol’ days aren’t then, they are right now.

Dyer and his sidekick, guitar whiz Rick Holmstrom, play the Underground in Santa Barbara on Saturday night, where they will showcase tunes off Dyer’s latest, “Listen Up.”

Things have improved a lot for Dyer since the old days and his first gig in Mississippi.

“I was about 13 years old at the time, and I made three bucks,” said Dyer during a recent phone interview. “Some buddies and I put a band together. They paid us nine bucks--three bucks each. We started getting other little jobs, like plantation gigs on Sunday afternoons. I’ll tell you, when I first came to California, it was hard to make nine bucks. That’s just the way things went then.”

Dyer was born in Muddy Waters’ hometown of Rolling Fork, Miss., in 1938, or back when FDR had fans other than PBS viewers. It sounds like a good place to be from.

“It was a blues place, man, when I was there,” Dyer said. “In that part of the world, you worked in the fields six days a week, then Saturday night you got drunk on moonshine. There’s really nothing to do except work, and some people just picked up a guitar and would play. It’s changed a lot since I left; there’s been a lot of generations since then. There’s a lot of TV watching and people see different things they want to be like.”

Dyer began his musical career at a tender age. While most boys were busy playing with toy soldiers, Dyer was playing along with Sonny Boy Williamson.

“I started playing around the age of 7,” he said. “I used to listen to Sonny Boy out of Helena, Ark., when he had his King Biscuit thing going. I always wanted to play some sort of instrument, and one of my friends lost his harmonica one day, and I found it. When he came looking for it, I hid it, and I’d go across the soybean field to learn how to play. Later, my mom made me give it back.”

Since the latter part of the 19th Century, a steady stream of rural southern blacks--lured in part by the promise of factory jobs--packed up for New York, Chicago or other large northern cities. But Dyer didn’t head north. Like those Dodgers, he headed West, arriving the same year, 1958.

“Well, I had an uncle that left there and came here,” he said. “He wanted me to come out here, and when I was 19 years old, I packed my clothes and left. When I got out here, I met George (Harmonica) Smith, Harmonica Fats, all those guys. After I was here about two years, I hooked up with George, and we played some as a father and son act.”

Back in 1958, there were a few million fewer people in L.A., less traffic, few freeways and considerably less gunfire. What was L.A. like in those days?

“In ‘58, L.A. was great--lotsa music all over the place. You could go anywhere and see good music--all the big guys were always coming through,” Dyer said. “Then in the early ‘60s, I stopped playing for awhile because there was no good blues.

“Then around 1968 or so, Muddy Waters came and George and I went to see him. . . . George went on the road with Muddy, I started playing again, and I’ve been at it ever since.”

Pay for the blues men is still at the $3 level compared to that of the current crop of rock gods.

“Rock musicians make so much money, they can afford to kick back after one gig,” Dyer said. “Blues guys aren’t gonna make that much. It’s always been that way and always will be, I guess.”

Like most fiftysomething overnight sensations, Dyer is getting by with a little help from his friends. Number 1 on the list has to be youthful guitar shredder, Holmstrom, a.k.a. “L.A. Holmes,” an odd name for a guy from Alaska.

“Rick was working with William Clarke, and Clarke had to leave town so I sat in for him,” said Dyer. “Then I recorded a song for one of Clarke’s LPs and ran into Rick again. We started getting little gigs together and we recorded this tape just for PR purposes.

“We sent it to Black Top about a year ago, and it became “Listen Up.” We’ve been getting some darn good response. We just finished another album which should be out in April. It used to be strictly down to earth, but we’re trying to get it out of that old 12-bar blues stuff by adding some swing to it.”

The Dodgers may be on temporary hiatus 38 years later, but Dyer has no such intentions.

“Man, if I was making that kind of money, I wouldn’t even think about no strike,” he said. “I can’t afford no strike.”

Details

* WHAT: Johnny Dyer Band.

* WHERE: Underground, 110 Santa Barbara St., Santa Barbara.

* WHEN: Saturday at 9 p.m.

* HOW MUCH: $6.

* CALL: 965-5050.