Linda Gail Lewis, Familiar With Musical Geniuses

How does a little-known musician gear up to collaborate with Van Morrison,one of pop music’s most gifted performers but also one of its notoriously volatile eccentrics?

No sweat if your big brother happens to be a rock pioneer who’s arguably even more volatile and more eccentric than Morrison--Jerry Lee Lewis.

“I grew up in a house with a genius, so I know what a genius is and I know how to recognize one,” says Linda Gail Lewis, 53. “You can’t treat them like anybody else because they are different. Knowing that has been a big help to me. I love my brother and I’ve never had a problem with him, and now, traveling with Van, he’s wonderful too.

“To tell you the truth, if you’re trying and if you have talent, you get into the groove and you’ve done your homework, you’ll never have a problem,” says Lewis, who will appear with Morrison at the Wiltern Theatre this weekend. “But if you’re not trying, and you don’t care, he’ll make mincemeat out of you.”

Their U.S. tour is built around material from their duet album “You Win Again.” It was released in September and features their harmonizing and her pumping piano on classic country and early rock songs plus a few R&B-soul; chestnuts and one Morrison original, “No Way Pedro.”

Despite Morrison’s frequent teamings with the likes of traditional Irish band the Chieftains, jazzman Mose Allison and blues veteran John Lee Hooker, even the Morrison faithful were wondering “Linda who?” when word surfaced over the summer that he was releasing a duet album with Lewis.

Morrison first heard her sing in 1993 when he dropped in on a Jerry Lee Lewis convention in Wales, where she lives most of the year. They met briefly, but she didn’t hear from him again until last March, when she received a dinner invitation through a mutual friend.

She also was invited to attend a Morrison show--her first exposure to him in concert.

“I’d been a fan of his music, but when I heard him sing live I was floored,” she says. “After the show I told him, ‘This has changed my life.’ He looked at me and said, ‘That’s very nice,’ and then he said, ‘I hope you mean it.’

“But it really did change my life. I don’t want a day to go by now and not hear Van Morrison sing something.”

Morrison then invited her over to jam on some old tunes, which led to some recording sessions. Lewis didn’t hold out much hope the recordings would ever be released. After all, Morrison is notorious for leaving many of his studio tapes on the shelf.

Morrison told her he’d only consider releasing the album if they had good chemistry on stage, and during a test gig in Dorset, England, she found out that the album would be his next release when he announced it to the audience.

“It’s been like a Cinderella kind of thing,” Lewis says. “I figured I’d wake up any day and everything would turn back into a pumpkin. But it didn’t happen.”

Lewis thought her career was heading to the pumpkin patch in the late ‘80s when she lost her longtime job as Jerry Lee’s opening act and backup singer to his latest wife, Kerrie. (The two siblings make the Gabor sisters look like marital amateurs: He’s been married six times, she’s walked down the aisle eight.)

“I thank her for that,” says Lewis, noting that her sister-in-law still “is not that fond of me.”

Since 1990, Lewis has played regularly in Europe at roots-rock festivals and released a series of country albums overseas. Morrison also drafted her Welsh band, Red Hot Poker, for this tour.

“I’ve become much more serious about my music because I finally realized that I really want to do this [on my own],” says Lewis. “Some people have told me, ‘You should have done that back when you were 20.’ But I did what I wanted to do when I was 20 and now that I’m 39,” she adds with a laugh, “I’m doing what I want to now.”

She’s hoping her latest album, 1998’s “Linda Gail Lewis,” will get a shot at a U.S. release now that she’s getting attention because of her teaming with Morrison. “I used to think there was one really great entertainer in the world,” she says. “Now I know there are two.”

* Van Morrison and Linda Gail Lewis, Saturday and Sunday at the Wiltern Theatre, 3790 Wilshire Blvd., L.A., 8 p.m. Sold out. (213) 380-5005.