As Jonathan Lee rounded a redwood-shrouded curve on Old River Road near Forestville, he saw a sight that chills any cyclist’s blood: an older-model sedan approaching on the wrong side of the road, headed straight for his handlebars.

“I remember hitting the brakes, but I wasn’t trying to swerve or anything. It was going to happen,” he said. “There was no out. I instantly went, ‘This is going to be bad.’”

The impact bounced Lee, 41, off the windshield and straight into the air, spinning like the blades of a helicopter. He landed flat on his back, unconscious but alive. He survived without broken bones, but he suffered a severe concussion that sidelined him for weeks.

Lee, an avid competitive cyclist from Santa Rosa, said he is grateful for not remembering the impact, which easily could have killed him. He does, however, remember that awful final moment before the blow.

“Honestly, I remember thinking this is death, this is the end,” he said, six months after that perilous encounter in September 2013.

Lee is one of dozens of cyclists injured on the county’s roads last year as Sonoma has exploded in popularity and acquired a worldwide reputation as a cycling destination.

“You’ve got valleys, you’ve got the redwoods, you’ve got the vineyards, you’ve got the ocean all within an easy one day’s training,” said Santa Rosa
cyclist Bob Grove, explaining the draw.

As the number of cyclists grows, so does the tension on scenic back roads, charming because they are narrow and twisting. Often, danger waits around the blind corners on roads simply not wide enough to accommodate both drivers and riders, who range from cycling pros to tourists renting bikes for the day. Encounters sometimes leave motorists and cyclists baffled and more than a little frustrated. Although there is plenty of blame to go around, cyclists themselves admit that sometimes their own behavior contributes to the unease, when bikers fail to stop at lights and stop signs, ride in lane-blocking packs, or pedal down the wrong side of the road.

“I think what happens is a lot of times, motorists get angry at bikers when they act like boneheads,” said Jim Keene, co-owner of Santa Rosa’s NorCal
Bike Sport shop.

The influx of cyclists to Sonoma County started with the pros, who found that the steep climbs of west county roads simulated the grueling mountain
stages of the Tour de France and other iconic races, but with weather conditions that allow year-round training. It moved on to serious cyclists, who flocked to the annual GrandFondo ride established in 2009 by international cycling star Levi Leipheimer. He moved to Santa Rosa and has extolled the virtues of the county’s rugged rural rides such as King Ridge Road, along the steep hills above Cazadero in northwest Sonoma County.

The attraction has now filtered down to the more casual riders, commuters and recreational cyclists who populate the roads in ever-greater numbers.

And it’s easy to see why: sweeping views across the rugged coast from Coleman Valley Road near Bodega Bay; cool, moist redwood forests on Bohemian Highway and River Road near Occidental and Guerneville; rolling vineyards along Healdsburg’s Westside Road and West Dry Creek Road, the fields covered with mustard in the spring and grapes in the summer; roads dotted with wineries, all under the looming bulk of Mount St. Helena on the horizon.

“Look around you. What’s not to like?” asked bride-to-be Karen Runde of Burlingame, who was pedaling a rented bike along West Dry Creek Road with some girlfriends for a bachelorette weekend recently.

“Just these rolling hills, you feel like you’re in ‘The Sound of Music.’ It’s very peaceful. The homes are gorgeous. There’s a lot of character and charm.”

Yet the reality is that Sonoma County’s local road network is, in many places, little more than a patchwork of glorified farm trails, the paved-over remnants of horse cart tracks through the wilderness that were never reengineered to meet the needs of the 20th century, much less the 21st. The sprawling road system is beyond the financial ability of the county to maintain, leaving many of the rural roads in poor condition, as much patch as pavement, even as the population increases (half a million residents and growing), putting even more vehicles on those roads.

The multiplying crowds of cyclists leave the person in charge of maintaining those roads scratching his head.

“I am just amazed that people ride on narrow country roads where the speed limit is 45 or 50 miles per hour,” said Tom O’Kane, deputy director of the county’s Transportation and Public Works Department. “I think that is just a deathtrap. Then they expect motorists to look out for them.”

That growing competition for space has led to a number of high-profile injuries and deaths in recent years, including a 2012 hit-and-run collision in Alexander Valley that left internationally known competitive cyclist Michael Torckler of New Zealand bleeding and broken beside Pine Flat Road, a route widely known as challenging even for pro-level riders.

The accident nearly ended his cycling career. Driver Arthur Yu of Rohnert Park was sentenced to 10 years in prison for hit-and-run and reckless driving.

That same year, beloved Sonoma State University professor Steve Norwick, 68, died after being struck from behind by a vehicle on Petaluma Hill Road. That roadway is wide and relatively well-maintained, but cyclists say a combination of heavy commuter traffic, high vehicle speeds and debris accumulated on the shoulders can make it a hair-raising ride.

Sometimes, though not often, the tussle over asphalt degenerates into violence. Perhaps most famously, Santa Rosa motorist Harry E. Smith struck cyclist Toraj Soltani after a confrontation on Pythian Road southeast of Santa Rosa. When Soltani tried to flee, Smith drove off the road after him, chasing him onto the Oakmont golf course, bumping his rear tire.

That threw Soltani from his bike, causing severe wrist injuries. Smith later pleaded guilty to two counts of assault with a deadly weapon and other charges, but was sentenced to five years in a medical center after a doctor testified the then-82-year-old man was suffering from dementia at the time of the attack.

“Sadly, we have had a number of troubling incidents, but that does tend to reinforce the idea that it isn’t safe to ride,” said west county Supervisor Efren Carrillo, who has been an enthusiastic promoter of cycle-based tourism. “Some of these tragedies tend to promote finger pointing … unfortunately, it is divisive and counterproductive, and I do think it is a misrepresentation of reality.”

Penngrove resident Dianne Magliulo is acutely conscious of those sorts of events when she rides the county’s roads with her husband, Wayne, particularly such busy thoroughfares as Old Redwood Highway near her home.

“I don’t like the speed of the cars going by me and the trucks,” she said, taking a break during a recent back-country ride. “It makes me a little bit too stressed to be comfortable driving on those roads, even though they’re accommodating people.”

Although the back roads seem narrower and more threatening to drivers, Magliulo said, from a biker’s point of view, routes like West Dry Creek Road, where the Magliulos were riding that day, are better.

“It’s winding and people are paying more attention,” on the back roads, she said. “But you go down Old Redwood Highway, Petaluma Hill Road, and, I mean, are just barreling down there, 60 miles an hour.”

But, Magliulo admitted, she thinks carefully before she and her husband decide to pull into one of the area’s many wineries, hoping “Nobody will be behind us in a car after going to six of them,” she said.

There are an average of 33 collisions a year involving bikes and motor vehicles on county roads, according to the CHP, which does not track accidents on city streets. Deaths, while sensational, are mercifully rare: four cyclists have died on county roads since 2008, three of them in 2012.

But those relatively modest numbers belie the stress on the roadways. Few topics generate as much emotion among riders and motorists alike.

Drivers tend to decry the arrogant, traffic-blocking, law-flouting ways of the cyclists. They travel in packs that block the lanes. They refuse to move to the right to allow traffic to pass. They blow through stop signs and zip around downhill turns in the wrong lane.

“They have been pretty obnoxious riding on some of the narrow roads,” O’Kane said of his on-the-road encounters with cyclists. “I get the Bronx salute or the raspberry salute and I’m on my side of the road and they’re in a group. … I don’t forget things like that.”

For their part, cyclists complain bitterly about clueless or overtly hostile drivers failing to share the road, endangering their lives.

“I have definitely noticed an increase … in really negative emotions from motorists,” said Lauren Lee, wife of Jonathan Lee and a board member of the Red Peloton, a Santa Rosa-based cycling club. “It takes the form of flipping us off, honking at us, getting buzzed.”

Even more alarming, cyclists say, are the motorists who are playing with the radio, using their phone, or simply being unaware of their surroundings.
“We’ve got to get serious about distracted driving because that’s where you get your best return on investment,” said Supervisor Shirlee Zane, herself an active cyclist and the backer of several initiatives to protect pedestrians and bike riders from collisions with motor vehicles.

The growing number of cyclists has caused conflicts between riders and residents of these rural routes, who have been used to having the roads to themselves for decades. In 2010, the swell of cyclists led to a series of emotional meetings in Cazadero, with residents complaining vehemently about being overrun by bikes. They accused officials of caving in to cyclist pressure when the county removed two cattle guards, which kept free-range cattle from wandering off, yet posed a hazard to elite riders who liked to train in the area.

Into the breach stepped longtime resident Charlotte Berry, owner of Cazadero Hardware. She negotiated a truce between residents and cyclists
that has held the peace to this day.

“Hey, it’s just bicyclists. They have the right to be on the roads, too,” she said, though she admitted that as a motorist, “I understand how scary it is.
Your heart jumps out of your chest when you see a bicyclist.”

She and others say the growing friction between cyclists and motorists is just a stage to a better future, a day when road users are more used to one another.

“It’s the growing pains of trying to make Sonoma County a special place, to make Sonoma County even more bike-friendly,” Berry said.

Yet the squeeze on road space continues on the winery-studded rural lanes west of Healdsburg.

West Dry Creek Road resident Fred Corson has seen the ranks of cyclists swell since he moved to the area in 1998, coinciding with the boom in wineries and the resulting uptick in traffic.

“I think we’re lucky we haven’t had more serious problems,” he said. “I think it is only a matter of time.”

West Dry Creek Road is a nationally known route for cyclists and wine tasters alike, winding through some of the most scenic parts of Wine County. From Corson’s neighbodhood, wineries can be seen for miles, as far as the Mayacamas Mountains on the edge of Lake County. But the road is so narrow that two motor vehicles barely fit side by side. On the west side of the road, hills and fences mark off the homes and farms. On the east, the raised pavement drops off to ditches and fields.

Corson said he has seen a surge in cyclists, going from a trickle to a constant stream on busy weekends.

The presence of large group rides and events makes it slow and difficult to get in and out of the neighborhood.

Corson is not opposed to cyclists, explaining that tourists provide the money that keeps the region rural, yet he still worries about the potential for a
serious accident on the cramped roadway.

“I have a real problem with novice bicyclists, the ones that are the most dangerous,” he said. “They don’t know what to do, they are the most unstable, they fall over in front of you.”

At least some of those less-experienced riders come by way of the booming business in bike rentals and guided tours. Bike shop owners in Healdsburg said they have seen their business soar in recent years. They also said they are making an effort to get their rental customers to follow the rules of the road, respect motorists, and be conscious of the residents of the area.

“We kind of feel like when someone comes to us, we have the chance to give them information on how to make it safer for everyone — ride single
file, respect other users, obey traffic laws,” said John Mastrianni, owner of Wine Country Bikes, which rents more than 8,000 bikes every year. He added, “We caution them a great deal about drinking and biking.”

Richard Peacock, owner of Spoke Folks, which also rents bikes, said he tries to steer customers away from routes that seem beyond their abilities or which might expose them to high-speed traffic, though he acknowledges that customers are free to ignore his suggestions.

“What we say is, ‘Here are the quieter roads,’” he said. “Quieter roads are what you want.”

Tourists are often surprised that Sonoma County has few dedicated bike trails and that the most scenic rides require pedaling on the open road.

“Sometimes they’ll decline to ride because they feel uncomfortable riding on the road with cars,” Peacock said, “but that is really rare.”

Bicyclists remain a small but important customer base for the wineries that line routes such as Westside Road, said Alex Davis, whose family has
owned Porter Creek Vineyards for 35 years. About 10 percent of the customer traffic on busy days comes in on two wheels.

“In the old days, wineries used to discourage bicyclists since they would come in to taste but not buy anything,” he said. With the increasing ease of
interstate wine shipping, however, cyclists are more willing to spend their money at wineries.

Some producers actively court bicycle traffic now.

The 2-year-old tasting room at Martorana Family Winery on West Dry Creek Road advertises its bike-friendly nature by mounting the front wheel of a bike on its sign. Hospitality Manager Wendy Cox said at least 20 cyclists come in every day on a busy weekend, at least 10 percent of the total. Most visitors report safe and enjoyable rides along the rural roads, she said.

As a motorist on the way to and from work, Cox has simply learned to be tolerant, even in cases when cyclists forget themselves and ride two or three
abreast, making it difficult for cars to get by even on the best parts of the road.

“I’ve learned to be patient in my old age,” she said. “It’s not really that important to get there at a particular time.”

Although the roads are crowded, cyclists say the notion that their sport is any more dangerous than other activities is overblown.

“People who haven’t ridden are very afraid to go out on the road and it’s because of the perception of safety,” said Gary Helfrich, executive director of the Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition, an advocacy group for bike and pedestrian safety. “When something can change your life in an instant, like getting hit by a car, we’re very, very afraid of it. When it can ruin your life incrementally, like not getting exercise, we don’t think about it.”

But Jonathan Lee is not so sure about the distinction between perception and reality. As it turns out, that near-fatal encounter on Old River Road in September 2013 was his second major crash in about 30 days.

Lee and a group of friends had been zipping downhill on Occidental Road in August when they came around a turn and encountered a car that had just backed out of a driveway into their lane. There was plenty of room to pull left and save himself, Lee said, but then the unbelievable happened: the car turned back into the driveway, pulling left into the path of the oncoming cyclists.

Lee, in the lead of the pack as was his habit, slammed straight into the side of the car, traveling 40 mph. The impact vaulted him off the bike and sent him skidding along a gravel driveway.

“The hand of God was there and I was banged up pretty good, but miraculously the bike was totally unbroken, and I actually rode home,” Lee said. “The helmet was gone and I was torn up.”

That first crash caused occasional panicked flashbacks, but did not shake his devotion to competitive cycling. In fact, Lee dusted himself off and rode in a race the next day.

But the second crash was too much. Lee and his wife have dramatically scaled back the number and length of their rides. He’s inclined to give up road riding and stick to off-road trails, where cars will no longer trouble him.

“I think,” Lee said, contemplating the ever-crowded public roads, “it is a ticking time bomb.”

It’s still dark, well before 7 a.m., when Bob Miller sends this text: “waiting for a call from a dude that will give a heads-up on a certain spot and then I might go there.”

Like most surfers along the North Coast, his choice surfing spots are well-guarded secrets. That’s why it’s no surprise when Miller doesn’t name the spot or offer an invitation to tag along.

The day before, the National Weather Service issued a beach hazard alert warning of waves between 7 and 10 feet and breaking around 17 seconds apart along the coast from Sonoma to Monterey counties.

The night before, TV weather forecasters warned of sleeper waves and nasty rip currents. “Don’t turn your back to the ocean,” is the mantra.

There’s no need for a reality check. This is not the Banzai Pipeline on the North Shore of Oahu. Or Huntington Beach. Or even the giants of Mavericks down by Half Moon Bay. This is the craggy, unsung North Coast around Bodega Bay, ravaged by unpredictable waves that pound relentlessly one day and turn to glass the next.

World champion Kelly Slater doesn’t drop by often. And there aren’t a lot of sponsorship opportunities.

Still, the hearty, grizzled, cold-wave surfers who return day after day, week after week, are more than a little stoked about the way the week is shaping up. Morning surf reports on Surf Line and Magic Seaweed websites project swells of 7 to 10 feet at Salmon Creek Beach, the most popular surf spot in Sonoma. But the parking lot is empty at sunrise, except for a couple cooking breakfast on a hibachi. A state parks lifeguard swings through in his truck and, seeing no surfers on the water, heads north on Highway 1.

A half-hour later, Miller, 46, who owns Bob’s Surf Shack in Bodega Bay, texts a sunrise photo of the wave break near his house at Carmet Beach. It’s followed by a text that reports: “other spot got report tide is killing it.”

When we finally catch up in the Doran Beach parking lot, he’s given up the chase, resigned to waves smaller than expected.

“There are other guys on that hunt to grasp that full-on power right now,” he said. “So as I’m driving over here, I’m passing guys who want the bison and not just the squirrels.”

Because of the angle of approaching winds against the wave break, it’s “becoming a little crummier and funkier” at Salmon Creek, Miller said. On the other hand, Doran can take a 10-foot swell and turn it into a “fun 4- to 5-foot wave and right now, in time, that’s nice and comfortable and I can do it in an hour or an hour and a half,” he said. “There are guys north of here who might be staring out at the water and spending an hour analyzing and then going out and spending two to three hours in the water just to catch the one to two fat waves.”

As more cars and trucks pull into the parking lot, each person stops to ask, “Hey, Bob, how’s it looking so far?”

Already out on the water is the most prolific surfer the North Coast has ever seen: 65-year-old Dale Webster, the Cal Ripken of the surfing world. He’s been surfing every day since 1975; Dec. 31, 2013, marked 14,000 consecutive days on the water for Webster, catching at least three waves a day.
Known as the “Daily Wavester,” he holds the Guinness World Record for most consecutive surfing days, and he’s been featured in myriad magazines, from Surfer to Sports Illustrated.

But today he’s admittedly not in a good mood. He’s had a rough weekend sharing waves with “kids who show up with these imported surfboards from China that they buy for $100 at Costco,” he said.

And don’t get him started on stand-up paddleboarders who “charge a sport on their credit card.”

Doran is the beach where, on gnarly days that were way too rough to surf anywhere else, Webster sought refuge and extended his record. Without Doran, there would likely be no record and no “Daily Wavester.” Now he’s a little bitter about how things have changed over the years.

“In the ’70s, if you acted up, you got called out on it,” Webster said. “Now in the age of political correctness, nobody can comment on somebody being out there on a surfboard they bought at Costco for $100. Now they’re surfers, too, and you can’t tell them what to do because they have a surfboard.”

All over the world, from Southern California to Australia, surfing has always been a territorial sport. When “Locals Only” signs didn’t do the trick, surf gangs with names like Bra Boys, Da Hui and Bird Rock Bandits would physically enforce the code. In the surf documentary, “Down the Barrel,” one surfer paddles up to another and punches him in the face for surfing where he’s not supposed to be. While not quite as confrontational, the same territorial resistance exists on the North Coast.

Headed out to join Webster on the water is Heath Lesik, a 32-year-old Windsor firefighter who lives in Bodega Bay. He caught his first wave at age 9 at Doran Beach, learning from his dad, Mike, who grew up surfing in San Diego.

Addicted to the rush ever since, Lesik describes surfing the North Coast, from Marin to Mendocino and beyond, as “a love-hate relationship. Sometimes you go two weeks without surfing and you can’t wait to get out on the water again, and other days you’re putting your wetsuit on and there’s frost on the beach and you’re thinking, ‘Why am I doing this?’”

He openly admitted, “I know it sounds selfish, but things have changed and you see a lot more people coming out and a lot more competition for every wave.”

In a sparsely populated region like Bodega Bay, it’s common to get surfers commuting several hours from inland towns, and they’re often seen as poachers with no respect for locals.

“It’s funny, you’ll hear guys claim that Salmon Creek is their local break, but they live like 45 minutes away in Santa Rosa,” said Megan Halavais, 28, one of only a handful of women who surf regularly here. In 2005, she was attacked by a 14-foot great white shark while surfing at Salmon Creek, suffering wounds to her right leg. It took about a month until she got back in the water on her board, she said, but it took years until the trauma “faded into the back of my mind and now it’s not the biggest thing I’m worried about.”

Like Lesik, she estimates there are 50 hardcore surfers who get out three to four times a week or more. They do it for the obvious adrenaline rush and thrill ride, but what keeps many coming back is the constancy. Amid all the variables that may change in their lives, the ocean is always waiting for them, another set of waves rolling in, each one a bigger challenge than the last. As Webster said, “I’ll keep doing this until I can’t do it anymore.”

Halavais has seen changes in surfer attitude over the years.

“When I first started, there was a crew of these old guys who were super local and really aggro and nowadays all those guys have really mellowed out and they have families and are just out there to have fun,” she said. “So it has softened up a bit, but there have been so many swarms of more surfers on this coast that it’s coming back to that aggressiveness on the water.”

Unwritten rules of surfing etiquette amount to basic common sense, like not cutting someone off on a wave, respecting the people who were out there before you, getting out of the way of another surfer and honoring a general wave rotation where you share and take your turn.

“And at spots that aren’t as obvious as Salmon Creek and are more remote, you don’t just paddle out there to a group of guys and act like you own the place,” Lesik explained. “It takes awhile until you get that respect and you’re not treated like a tourist.”

But no matter if you were born and raised in Bodega Bay or you drive from Vacaville to surf, one thing everyone agrees on is you can never predict what’s going to happen on the unruly North Coast.

“Just when you think you’ve got it made, Mother Nature can shut you down,” Lesik said.

A surfer and a state parks lifeguard, Nate Buck, 33, estimates he’s rescued about a dozen surfers from peril since he moved from San Diego to Bodega Bay in 2000.

“The conditions can change very quickly and this coastline is more exposed to the raw power of the ocean,” he said. “It’s a lot more raw and rugged compared to Southern California.”

And then there’s the cold. The average June water temperature at Newport Beach is 66 degrees; Bodega Bay is typically 15 degrees colder, a chilly 51 degrees that month.

His advice to beginning surfers is to know your limits and not panic.

“If you see that there’s nobody out in the water when you’re going out,” he added, “there’s probably a reason for that.”

For Halavais, the dicey North Coast has become a litmus test and a proving ground for any surfer:

“I always say if you can surf our coast, because it is such a fickle place, and you’re able to surf our coast well, then really you can surf anywhere and be a confident surfer.”

It’s hard to see the address from the street, but there’s no mistaking Charlie Musselwhite’s house outside Healdsburg. The giveaway is the van parked out front with a bumper sticker that reads, “Old School Means Real.”

Old school, as in being born in 1944 in the Mississippi Delta and raised in Memphis, where Musselwhite learned to play harmonica on the streets.

Old school, as in playing and living the blues for decades, drinking two quarts of bourbon a day before quitting cold turkey, living to tell about the gun held to his head one night, and surviving a collision with a big rig in Mexico.

It’s that same old school that singer-songwriter Ben Harper was looking for when he tapped Musselwhite to collaborate on “Get Up!”, the hard-charging, spirited song cycle that won the Grammy award for best blues album in January.

“Chemistry” is the word nearly every reviewer used to describe the connection between Harper’s hybrid next-generation blues and Musselwhite’s passionate, soulful harp. Adored by critics, the album was a huge hit not only with blues crowds but also on the festival circuit, where it transcended genre lines. It meant that at 69, Musselwhite (he turned 70 in January) suddenly embarked on one of the biggest years of his career in 2013, touring the world, from the U.S. to Australia, Brazil and all over Europe. Along the way, he and Harper hit every late-night TV show: David Letterman, Jay Leno, Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon.

“It’s been a great ride,” Musselwhite said in his soft Southern accent, his hair slicked back and his 6-foot-plus frame leaning back in a sofa in his living room. “I’m hardly ever home these days. If I’m off a week, it’s almost weird.”

When he is home, his daily ritual often involves a morning walk through vineyards or along the Russian River.

Across the room is a framed photo of Musselwhite and his wife and manager, Henrietta, with President Barack Obama and the first lady. It was taken when he played at the White House last year as part of the “Soulsville, USA: The History of Memphis Soul” program hosted by Michelle Obama. On another wall is a gold album on which he collaborated with singer Bonnie Raitt.

“If I’d known where all this was headed, I would’ve paid way more attention,” he said, looking back on his five-decade career. “I don’t even remember the first time I heard the blues. It was just part of the environment: blues, gospel, hillbilly.”

Musselwhite’s grandmother, Bessie Love, played piano in a Baptist church. His mother, Ruth Miller, who grew up on a Mississippi plantation adjacent to the Stovall Plantation where blues great Muddy Waters was born, also played piano. And when his father, Charlie Musselwhite Jr., wasn’t playing guitar or a mandolin he built himself, he was calling square dances.

As a kid in Memphis, the son made his first musical instruments out of a cigar box with rubber bands or a metal ammunition box strung with fishing line and played with a stick, almost like a slide guitar. At 13, his dad gave him his first guitar.

“I still remember making my first E chord, and then adding my little finger to it to make an E7,” Musselwhite said. “That was it, I was hooked.”

Growing up in segregated schools, he would question the Southern status quo.

“That’s the way my mother raised me,” he said. “She would say, ‘We’re all God’s children and if you disrespect somebody, you’re disrespecting God’s work.’ And I’d say, ‘Well, what about the separate water fountains?’ and she’d say, ‘We’re just a victim of circumstances.’”

As a teenager, he learned auto shop, machine shop and welding skills at Memphis Tech, which he remembers as “the only school you could go to if you got kicked out of all the other schools.”

It was on Beale Street in Memphis that he got hooked on the harmonica, watching street musicians and later picking up tips from country blues and jug band pioneers including Furry Lewis, Gus Cannon and Will Shade. As mechanized farming took over the South, Musselwhite joined the northward migration along Highway 51, heading to Chicago in 1962 when he was 18 to look for work, landing his first job as a driver for an exterminator.

“I didn’t even have a goal or a dream to be a musician,” he said. “I just loved the music and played it for my own satisfaction.”

One night, as Muddy Waters was leading an after-hours jam at Pepper’s Lounge, recalled Musselwhite, “A waitress I’d gotten to know said to Muddy, ‘You oughta hear Charlie play harmonica.’”

His life would never be the same. Soon he was playing gigs around Chicago with Robert Nighthawk and Big Joe Williams. He was one of a handful of white kids hanging out in South Side blues bars, along with musicians Nick Gravenites, Elvin Bishop and Paul Butterfield.

“I had more in common with the black people from the South, in Chicago, than with the white people in Chicago,” he said.

His first album, “Stand Back! Here Comes Charley [sic] Musselwhite’s Southside Band” in 1966, sold well and brought him instant recognition. It’s the same album Ben Harper points to in the “Get Up!” making-of video, when he talks about how his grandfather wore out the grooves in “Stand Back!” by playing it all the time in their house while Harper was growing up.

Musselwhite was eventually lured to the West Coast by receptive radio stations, a wealth of gigs and an audience that loved the blues. Over the years, he’s collaborated with John Lee Hooker, Cyndi Lauper and The Blind Boys of Alabama, to name just a few. That’s his harmonica you hear on INXS’s “Suicide Blonde” song and on Tom Waits’ “Chocolate Jesus.” Actor Dan Aykroyd has said that Musselwhite was the inspiration for his character in “The Blues Brothers” movie.

Now with a Grammy under his belt, which Musselwhite finally won after eight prior nominations, he’s been honored with nearly every award in the book, along with 14 W.C. Handy awards, given by the nonprofit Blues Foundation for the best in blues music every year, and induction into the Blues Hall of Fame in Memphis.

His latest solo album, “Juke Joint Chapel,” was recorded live in 2012 in Clarksdale, Miss., not far from where he was born in Kosciusko. This summer, he hits the road again with Harper and they’re already talking about collaborating on another album.

But Musselwhite hasn’t forgotten about his local fans. Sonoma County will be treated to a rare show at the end of May, when he kicks off the Healdsburg Jazz Festival with a two-day celebration of the blues and its influence on jazz. The first day, Musselwhite teams up with old pal Elvin Bishop and Guy Davis for the first set, and then he revisits the Cuban phrasings of his 1999 album, “Continental Drifter,” for a second set with John Santos Y Sus Soneros. The next day, he plays a set with jazz saxophonist Joshua Redman and his band, then Redman joins in with Musselwhite’s band.

“If you can play blues and you can play with that feel, that’s gonna color whatever else you do, no matter how much you advance to something else, like jazz,” he said. “If somebody comes out of a classical background and doesn’t have that, it’s real apparent in their music. They don’t have that grease in there.”