It was 1963, and the steel-body National Reso-Phonic guitar had been hanging on display for 30 years at Eddie Bell’s Guitar Headquarters in New York when John Hammond’s father took him there.

When Hammond saw it, sparks flew.

“I knew what a National was from photographs — Blind Boy Fuller had one, Blind Willie Johnson had one — but I’d never actually seen one. It was pretty amazing,” Hammond said, calling from his home in New Jersey last month. More than a half-century since that fateful encounter, the memories are still vivid.

At 73, Hammond is one of the few blues musicians still active with a history reaching back to the beginning of the big blues renaissance of the 1960s. His roots go deeper than most.

For most of America the blues renaissance began with “British invasion” bands like the Rolling Stones playing rock arrangements of American blues classics. Hammond was well ahead of the curve. His father — famed record producer, talent scout and civil rights activist John H. Hammond — worked with black jazz and blues artists as well as mainstream white artists, and Hammond grew to share his father’s diverse musical interests.

Hammond returns to Hono­lulu on Tuesday for a concert at Hawaiian Brian’s, as part of promoter Buffalo Music’s “Storytellers” series. He’ll be working solo — a man, his guitar and a harmonica — sharing the stories that go with the songs he sings.

HAMMOND SAYS he’s ready to talk story.

“In the past I didn’t talk much, I just played, but I’ve got some stories to tell that I never had before,” he said. “I’ve opened up on the stage much more about where I’ve been and what I’ve done, and who I’ve hung out with.”

The list of people he’s hung out with is a long one. The list of his accomplishments is long as well: They include providing the film soundtrack for the 1970 movie “Little Big Man,” winning a 1984 Grammy Award and hosting a 1991 documentary on the legendary bluesman Robert Johnson.

Johnson was 27 when he died in 1938 — poisoned, it was said, by the husband of a woman he’d taken an interest in. By the 1950s, as interest in American roots and blues music rapidly expanded, the bluesman’s life was the stuff of legend.

In 1961 Hammond’s father was instrumental in the release on vinyl of several rare Johnson recordings.

Hammond developed a parallel interest in Johnson as a teen, after he heard the seminal 1958 Folkways Records compilation “The Country Blues.” The album included one Johnson track, “Preachin’ Blues.”

“At that time nobody knew anything about him, and the search began,” Hammond said. “He was a great player — an inspiration to me and many others.”

In the years that followed, Hammond’s admiration for Johnson continued to grow.

“I’ve met and known guys who traveled with him and knew him — (blues guitarist) Johnny Shines in particular. Johnny told me that Johnson could listen to anything on the radio and play it, whether it be a polka or a pop tune. He could play anything, but what he chose to play was so intense.

“I don’t think of myself as a historian or anything like that, but my ears are always open,” he continued. “I’ve heard a lot of the old stuff but not everything. Every now and then someone will hip me to something I haven’t heard.”

AT THIS stage in his career, having appeared onstage since 1962, Hammond himself is a storied performer. He signed his first recording contract in 1962 and appeared at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963 — the same festival that Bob Dylan would spark controversy at two years later, by playing an electric guitar.

His first album was “Big City Blues,” released in 1964.

One of the biggest honors of his career was being inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2011.

Hammond said the list of blues musicians he counts among his inspirations is too long to recite in detail, but “of the old guys who maybe aren’t so well known, there’s Lonnie Johnson,” a guitarist. “His early recordings are breathtaking.” He also praises pianist Leroy Carr, who influenced many guitar players, including Johnson, to play a pianolike line on their instruments.

Almost a century later Hammond is keeping their legacies alive with his own extensive body of work.

“I prefer to play solo,” Hammond said. “I’m very much influenced by that stark, one-man, one-guitar sound that I find the most dramatic and the most profound.”