Steve Miller Returns to His Blues Roots : Pop music: The rock singer-guitarist kicks off a five-city tour that puts <i> Blues </i> back into the band’s name. ‘It’s not a Steve Miller Band greatest-hits tour,’ he says.

Steve Miller’s blues roots run deep. As the son of a music-loving pathologist whose house guests included Charles Mingus and Les Paul, he learned to play lead guitar from blues legend T-Bone Walker when he was 9.

When he was 12, he formed his first blues band. Later, after dropping out of college, he played Chicago blues and, after moving to San Francisco, formed the Steve Miller Blues Band.

But through such ‘70s hits as “Jet Airliner,” “Fly Like an Eagle,” “Rock’n Me,” “Take the Money and Run” and “The Joker,” classic-rock staples all, Miller built a successful and enduring career as a mainstream rocker, dropping blues from his band’s name.

This fall, though, Miller has brought it back--if only for a limited run. The Steve Miller Blues Band kicks off a five-city tour with shows tonight at the Wiltern Theatre and Sunday at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza.

And, if Miller sticks to his plan, nary a hit will be heard.

“Our plan is to play a whole blues set,” Miller says. “It’s not a Steve Miller Band greatest-hits tour. For the people who like that--who want to hear me play ‘The Joker’ and ‘Jet Airliner’ and those things--we’ve already booked a tour next summer, and we’ll see you then.”

Miller, who celebrated his 52nd birthday last month, hopes to make the blues tour an annual event, eventually expanding it to include several more cities.

His motivation?

“Just getting old and wanting to play as much music as I can before I drop dead,” he says by phone from his ranch in Ketchum, Ida., where he and the band rehearsed for six weeks this fall after ending a summer tour with the Doobie Brothers. “My plan is to keep playing until I fall over.”

Preparing for these shows, he says, has revitalized the band, which has toured with him each summer for the last eight years.

“This is where these guys really shine,” Miller says. “When they do the Steve Miller Band stuff, they’re sort of helping me out. But this is really their area of expertise.”

And putting the tour together, he says, has been a labor of love. The shows will include songs by such legendary bluesmen as Jimmy Reed, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters and, of course, Walker.

“We go back and listen to a lot of the original songs that inspired us,” Miller says. “I’m trying to present them the way that [artists such as] Muddy Waters presented them--at the same level and at the same volume and with the same instrumentation. Really play the stuff the way it was originally done.”

* The Steve Miller Blues Band plays tonight at the Wiltern Theatre, 3790 Wilshire Blvd., 8 p.m. $27.50-$35 . (213) 380-5005. Also Sunday at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, 2100 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd., 8 p.m. $25-$45. (805) 449-2787.