As jets scream by on their way to landing at nearby Heathrow Airport, singer/guitarist James Hunter is trying to explain what life was like as a teenager in Colchester, England.

"Being a Teddy Boy, I wasn't really into the punk thing. I was more into box jackets, pointy shoes and that sort of thing," he says over the long-distance line from London.

"I used to spend a lot of the time and all my pocket money at an independent record shop called Parrot Records. I was never into ('70s-era faux-'50s bands) Darts or Showaddywaddy. That was for 'plastics.'

"I liked Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent. In fact, it was through Eddie Cochran's Hallelujah, I Love Her So that I tracked down Ray Charles and discovered who he was," the 45-year-old singer/guitarist says.

As he was learning about classic soul and R&B, Hunter was also banging away at a £2 guitar, picking out tunes by Hank Marvin and the Shadows. Thus the roots of today's soul man were grounded.

Some 30 years later, Hunter's teen enthusiasms have grown into a full-blown musical career. His latest solo album, People Gonna Talk, was recently nominated for a best traditional blues Grammy, and he's about to embark on four months of non-stop gigging throughout the U.S. and Canada, with a couple of side trips back home thrown in for good measure.

Not bad for a guy who began his musical career as the awkwardly monikered Howlin' Wilf in the mid-1980s.

"Ooh, it was a complete mistake, that was," he says of the stage name he adopted in his early 20s. "I was the best-known misprint in the country. No one got it right. The whole joke relies on somebody having heard of Howlin' Wolf, and obviously not enough people had."

Still, those days as Wilf persuaded Hunter to give up his job with British Rail in order to pursue music full time. He's had to sign on to the dole and take temporary employment over the years, but music has always been his primary love.

His first break came when a fan buttonholed Van Morrison and convinced the Irish soulman to see Hunter perform in Newport, Wales, in 1989.

"I ended up chatting with him and we got on quite well," Hunter says.

That encounter led to gigs with Morrison's Rhythm and Blues Revue and, ultimately, Hunter's Sam Cooke-like singing voice and his ringing guitar were appearing on the Morrison studio album Days Like This and doing a duet with The Man on the live album A Night in San Francisco.

Solo recording opportunities remained elusive for Hunter until the mid-'90s, as the pop-and-indie-rock-oriented British music biz didn't know what to do with a throwback to the sounds of the '50s and '60s.

A debut solo album, .Believe What I Say, was released by Ace in 1994, but Hunter was not to record again until Boz Boorer, Morrissey's guitarist and bandleader, produced an album called Kick It Around for German label Ruf in 2001.

His latter-day success is a direct result of New Yorkers Kimberly Guise and Jonathon Otto recognizing his brilliance and forming GO Records specifically for him. They landed a deal with the historic Rounder label, carefully marketed the record to influential DJs, journalists and talent buyers on both sides of the Atlantic, and Hunter suddenly found himself a Grammy nominee whose album was in Top 10 lists all over the world at the end of 2006.

"Really the turning point has been doing this record," Hunter says. "I feel vindicated by it, I think, particularly because of all the resistance I met along the way."