Keeping Best of the Blues Alive, Well : Music: Lil’ Ed Williams is a throwback. The tunes he and band play is from the golden era of Chicago-style blues.

SAN DIEGO —  It’s written all over his maniacal, snaggletoothed grin and elfin expression. It’s ingrained in his simple but eloquent slide guitar playing, and his unpretentious, good-timey singing. Lil’ Ed Williams is not your stock blues musician of the ‘90s.

Williams, frontman of Lil’ Ed and The Blues Imperials, who perform Friday night at the Rhythm Cafe, is a throwback to the golden age of Chicago blues. Echoes of rougher but simpler times reverberate in Williams’ stinging guitar work and hot boogie compositions, invoking memories of blues giants such as John Lee Hooker and Elmore James. There’s just no room for modern-day, designer stylings or down-on-my-luck posturing in Williams’ finely pointed vision. He’s a traditionalist by design.

“I don’t think you should try to change what the blues is already,” said Williams in a recent telephone interview from his Chicago home. “I think it should stay in the old perspective. I don’t believe that rock ‘n’ roll and blues go together at all. When you try to slick it up and do the same thing over and over, it gets boring at some point.

“Everybody’s got their own style,” he said. “What I try to do is stick to my own. But I don’t worry about anybody else--if I don’t like something, I just don’t listen to it.”

Williams, just 37, takes an approach to his music not unlike the storied blues patriarchs of the ‘50s. Perhaps that’s only natural, as his uncle--J.B. Hutto--was himself recognized as a top Chicago bluesman of the era.

Hutto had a tough and primitive sound, the influence of which is readily apparent in Williams’ own technically limited but fiercely effective slide work. Hutto recorded a number of sides for Chess Records in the ‘50s, but his fame never spread too far beyond the Cook County line. No matter to Williams--he refers to Hutto as his inspiration for becoming a musician.

“Uncle J.B. was always laughing and telling jokes, and he was always playing music around the house,” Williams reminisced. “It was great! We had a good time all the time. I used to watch him, and he’d sit down and show us a few things. Me and Pookie (James Young, Williams’ brother and bassist for the Blues Imperials) would learn from him and laugh with him. He definitely made me want to be a musician, because it was always so much fun to see him play.”

A sense of fun seems to run in the family, as having a good time has become Williams’ stock in trade as a performer. Unapologetically playing up to his fans, Williams is known for executing duck walks, back bends and other acrobatics in concert. Unlike much of the current inventory of blues musicians--many of whom feel compelled to contrive a ludicrous aura of solemnity--Williams is out to entertain his fans rather than stoke a false image.

In this sense, he’s a throwback to the legends as well, in the grand tradition of men like Louis Jordan, T-Bone Walker and J.B. Lenoir, who were almost as renowned for their stage antics as their music.

“Everybody likes to have a good time,” Williams said. “Once I get ‘em going, they want to come back and see me again and have some more fun. Blues is not all sadness.”

Much of Williams’ personal standard of revelry spills out onto Lil’ Ed and The Blues Imperials’ latest album, “. . .What You See Is What You Get” (Alligator Records), although as a backup group, the Imperials aren’t up to the task of re-creating the classic Chicago vibes of the ‘50s. In fact, the Imperials are something of a detriment to Williams’ purity, lacking the personality and sense of tradition that Williams so easily possesses. Particularly annoying is the ham-fisted and show-offy drummer, Kelly Littleton, who has no sense of sympathy for Williams’ unassuming brand of boogie.

But less-than-stellar support isn’t enough to dampen Williams’ own potency as a performer. He prides himself on giving everything he’s got to his growing ranks of fans, whom he affectionately refers to as “Ed Heads.”

He also takes great pride in the relative success he’s currently enjoying, following more than a decade of playing the Chicago bar circuit.

“I’m doing what I want, getting paid, and buying a bunch of things I’ve been wanting all my life,” he said. “I’m having myself a great life here.”

* Lil’ Ed and The Blues Imperials perform Friday night at the Rhythm Cafe, 8022 Claremont Mesa Blvd. Len Rainey and The Midnight Players and Blues Seville open. Doors open at 8 p.m., show starts at 9:30. Tickets, available through Ticketmaster and at the Rhythm Cafe box office, are $6 advance, $7 at the door.