There's an old saying that suggests we shouldn't meet our heroes. They're better kept at a distance, where the warts don't show and the tarnished spots don't dim the luster.

Up close and personal, you're risking proof of mere mortality.

"Don't meet your heroes?" remarks Robert Cray, who has evolved into something of a hero in his own right over the past two decades. "Who said that? I've never heard it. "

The 54-year-old blues-rocker, headed to the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts this weekend with his band, is deep into a discussion on the many heroes he's encountered, sans regrets.

Maybe that's because he's had plenty of practice from way back.

He remembers the time he stood outside a venue in Eugene, Ore., with his best friend.

Their mission: waiting for that night's headliner, Buddy Guy, to arrive, and then cornering him.

"He was late, and we were standing out in the alley," Cray recalls. "Then the van pulled up and Buddy was driving. He got out and said, 'Hey, man, "I'll bet you're almost good enough to be in my band!'"

From that ice-breaker on, things only got warmer and friendlier.

Take, for another example, his high school graduation party back in the spring of '71 in Tacoma, Wash. (though born in Georgia, Cray was an Army brat whose childhood itinerary spanned the country, eventually transplanting him to the Pacific Northwest, where his roots remain to this day).

Instead of some commercial Top 40 pop-rock band suitable for a '70s prom, Cray's Class of '71 decided that blues great Albert Collins might make for a great party attraction.

It was put to a vote, he says.

And the nearly unanimous vote put Collins within easy reach of Cray, whose serious love of blues and soul was taking wing in his adolescence.

"That was pretty cool," he admits, seemingly still impressed more than 35 years later. "I got the chance to meet him long enough that he remembered me."

The proof would come one day in the future.

After graduating from Tacoma High, Cray and his musical buddies had embarked on the usual journey through the regional club scene, "just trying to eke out a living," he says.

His buddies were bass guitarist Richard Cousins and drummer Tom Murphy, who formed the nucleus of the first Robert Cray Band lineup.

Around five years after that high school graduation party, Cray crossed paths with his hero Albert Collins again.

Here was one hero who never forgot.

"I wound up backing him for the next year and a half," recalls Cray, including a showy slot at the San Francisco Blues Festival in 1977. At the festival, he impressed a pair of record producers, who signed the Robert Cray Band to its first record deal, via Tomato Records.

Over the next decade, Cray continued to meet his heroes (Muddy Waters, Freddie King, B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, John Lee Hooker, etc.).

"Almost all of them have been like the music they make," he says. "Because that's where their personality comes out. Speaking to B.B. King in person, you know that he's really generous, and his music reflects that."

Meanwhile, the Robert Cray Band continued to evolve over a series of membership changes and regional successes. The turning point came in 1982, when Mercury Records came a-courting and released "Bad Influence."

In 1985, he recorded "Showdown" with that recurrent hero, Albert Collins, which earned Cray the first of his five Grammy Awards and the first armful of countless W.C. Handy Awards.

By 1986, the Robert Cray Band was ready to explode.

The album: "Strong Persuader." The breakout single: "Smokin' Gun."

Both did the unthinkable: They crossed over from the blues charts smack into the mainstream Top 40.

Around the same time, Cray appeared in the Chuck Berry tribute film, "Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll," making a foursome with Berry, Eric Clapton and Keith Richards.

Cray's relationship with Clapton, in particular, has evolved into close friendship in the years since.

In recent times, he's performed at Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival and spent part of the past year opening for Slow Hand on his 2006-07 world tour.

"I've played on several of his albums," Cray adds, "but he hasn't played on one of mine yet, only because I haven't found the right material."

That day will come, Cray promises.

The current Robert Cray Band lineup has been the longest-running to date: keyboardist Jim Pugh and bass guitarist Karl Sevareid have been on board since 1989, and drummer Kevin Hayes since 1992.

Though they've long passed the days when one of their songs could be found on Top 40 radio, Cray doesn't seem surprised at the evolutionary arc.

"For us, getting radio airplay was a fluke in the first place," he says.

Apart from the random crossover act like Stevie Ray Vaughan or George Thorogood, blues guitarists were hardly a dime a dozen on the pop charts, even in 1986.

"I've always known that everything would change; that's how it is," Cray adds. "The tide turned for us after 'Strong Persuader,' when the next album didn't do as well - it 'only' went gold. I think it was fortunate for us that we gained a lot of fans during that time."

They are fans, he says, who've remained faithful over the years, and continued to bring others into the fold.

Numbered among those fans have been the likes of some of Cray's own guitar heroes - you know, the ones you shouldn't meet.

Like Albert Collins. Buddy Guy. Eric Clapton.

Yeah, right. Never.

Robert Cray just laughs.

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At a glance

What: The Robert Cray Band

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday

Where: Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts, 110 E. Mulberry St., Bloomington

Tickets: $36.50 to $42.50

Box office number: (866) 686-9541

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Tutoring a Blues Brother

By Dan Craft | dcraft@pantagraph.com

Nearly a decade before Robert Cray and his band hit Grammy-winning pay dirt with "Strong Persuader" and "Smokin' Gun," he'd already helped tutor one of the Blues Brothers.

Inspire him, in fact.

Get credit for him, as it turned out.

And it all occurred on behalf of a little movie number called "National Lampoon's Animal House," which just happened to be filming in Cray's back yard in the summer of '77.

That year, Cray was still a grunt musician, working the Pacific Northwest bar scene alongside hundreds of other wannabe singer-guitarists.

"I was living in Eugene, Ore., and we'd just finished a four-night stand at this club," he recalls 30 years later. "Afterward, this lady calling herself a casting director came up and asked us if we wanted to do a part in a movie that would be filming there."

Cray's response: "Yeah … sure … right."

Several months later, the movie company turned up. "We'd gotten back (from the road) on a Sunday night, and then we were outfitted and on the set the next day."

Cray & Co. would be playing a fictional frat-party band called Otis Day & The Knights. Though a guitarist, Cray found himself handed a bass.

Toga party!!??

Actually, Cray confesses, he had no idea what the movie was about. He says it had a different working title that meant nothing to him.

All told, it took around three days to shoot the Otis Day & The Knights scenes. After hours, it was back to gigging at the clubs around Eugene.

Also prowling those clubs, recalls Cray, was a cast member whose role in the film would turn him into a superstar.

"This guy named John Belushi would come in and sit in with this splinter band I had (The Crayhawks)," Cray says. "Afterwards, we'd take him home to our house, where we turned him onto blues music."

Abetting the transformation of Belushi into a future Blues Brother was one of Cray's fellow musicians, Curtis Delgado, who sang, played harmonica "and wore prescription Ray-Bans."

According to Cray, the entire Blues Brothers look and a chunk of its sound came from that after-hours, off-set exposure to Cray & Co. during the summer of '77.

And Belushi never forgot: "He gave us credit in the first Blues Brothers record," Cray recalls.

And when the Blues Brothers made their debut on "Saturday Night Live," Belushi and Dan Aykroyd's Jake and Elwood were introduced by Paul Schaeffer with the line, "With the help of Curtis Delgado and The Cray Band, we give you … The Blues Brothers!"

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Smokin' gunmen

In addition to its namesake, The Robert Cray Band is comprised of:

Jim Pugh

• Age: 53

• Musical weapon: Anything with keys, especially pianos and organs

• Cray posse membership: Since 1989

• Past associations, in and outside the law: Otis Rush, B.B. King, Etta James, Johnny Taylor, Muddy Waters, The Gospel Hummingbirds

• Most wanted for: Split personality ("I'm part Ward Cleaver," per his playing dad to four kids; "And I'm part Groove Holmes," per his funky organ playing. "Sometimes," he confesses, "I get mixed up and play organ like Ward and talk to my kids like Groove")

Karl Sevareid

• Age: 61

• Musical weapon: Anything that can be plucked, especially bass guitars

• Cray posse membership: Since 1989

• Past associations, in and outside the law: nephew of the late CBS news pundit, Eric Sevareid

• Most wanted for: Tie - impersonating a folk singer (in the '60s, "I got in with the folkie crowd and played in jug bands and other embarrassments before the blues bug bit me"), and for once playing in a band called Fried Suck

Kevin Hayes

• Age: 47

• Musical weapon: Anything that can be whacked, especially drums

• Cray posse membership: Since 1992

• Past associations, in and outside the law: sister Bonnie wrote hits for another Bonnie, Bonnie Raitt; brother Chris wrote songs and played lead guitar for Huey Lewis & The News

• Most wanted for: Poultricide ("my killer fried chicken")