When most children his age were banging on pots and pans, 4-year-old Joe Bonamassa picked up a pint-sized guitar and embarked on his prodigious blues career.

Now 28, he infuses blues with a youthful enthusiasm he says much contemporary music lacks.

"I think people crave something with emotion and soul that they don't get with pop music," said Bonamassa, who performs Thursday as the second act in Decatur Magazine's Blues in Central Park series.

"A McDonald's hamburger has more soul than most of the stuff on the Billboard chart right now."

"This is going to be by far the biggest crowd we've ever had downtown," said Jay Hartman, who books the acts for the series.

Hartman said he first heard of Bonamassa through a documentary on famed engineer Tom Dowd. Dowd, who has worked with Ray Charles, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane and Aretha Franklin, produced Bonamassa's "A New Day Yesterday."

There's little any guitarist could hope to attain after opening for B.B. King at the age of 12. But Bonamassa has been bringing about the revival of blues since his fingers could cradle a fretboard.

Bred on his guitar dealer father's collection of Robert Johnson, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Cream and Jimi Hendrix, Bonamassa was performing locally in upstate New York by the age of 10.

"I've always known that this was what I was gonna do," he said.

Bonamassa met members of his first band, Bloodline, while participating in a tribute to the founder of Fender guitars. Along with Waylon Krieger (son of the Doors guitarist Robbie Krieger), Aaron Davis (drummer son of trumpet pioneer Miles Davis) and Berry Oakley Jr. (whose father played bass with the Allman Brothers), the band released a self-titled CD and toured nationally.

When Bloodline split, Bona ;massa studied vocals and in 2000 cut his debut solo CD, "A New Day Yesterday," which includes a cover of the Jethro Tull song of the same name. He released "So, It's Like That" in 2002 and "Blues Deluxe" the next year, followed by 2004's "Had to Cry Today." Bonamassa has performed alongside Bad Company, George Thorogood, Peter Frampton and Cheap Trick.

The guitarist wants to perpetuate blues as a genre.

"We do play an older style of music with vitality," Bonamassa said. Blues is the "great-great grandparent of what (kids) listen to right now. I think people should know who Muddy Waters is. I think people should know how the Rolling Stones got their name," he said.

(The Rolling Stones took their name from a recording by the legendary Waters, the Chicago blues musician who helped popularize electric guitar in the late 1940s.)

"I'm a firm believer that you need to expose this kind of music to kids," Bonamassa said, because they don't hear blues on the radio or VH1. To do so, he worked with a program that teaches teenagers about his area of musical expertise.

The Blues in the Schools program was developed by the Blues Foundation to introduce a new generation to a genre that gave roots to much of today's popular music.

BluesWax magazine readers voted Bonamassa artist of the year in 2004, and "Had to Cry Today was album of the year.

Fresh off a European tour, Bonamassa is scheduled to play from 7 to 10 p.m. Thursday in Central Park. This is Blues in the Park's fifth season.

"We had no clue the first time we put this on if anybody would show, but it just keeps growing," Hartman said.

WHO: Joe Bonamassa, performing at Blues in Central Park.

WHEN: 7 p.m. Thursday, July 21. Food and beer sales begin at 6 p.m.

WHERE: Central Park, Decatur.

ADMISSION: Free.

ON THE WEB: www.jbona massa.com.

Holly Henschen can be reached at hhenschen@;herald-review.com or 421-6986.