Dick Waterman can trace his intense, decades-long involvement with blues music — which includes writing about the blues as a journalist, photographing generations of great bluesmen and women and eventually managing and promoting legendary artists such as Buddy Guy and Bonnie Raitt — to an early 1960s encounter with Mississippi John Hurt.

Hurt was a bluesman who recorded in the late ’20s and faded into obscurity, only to make a brief comeback before his death in 1966. Waterman saw him at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963 and was “swept away” by the man and his music.  

“He was a delightful man,” Waterman says by phone from his home in Oxford, Miss. “People who knew him, like John Sebastian, who named his group, the Lovin’ Spoonful, after a John Hurt song, or Judy Collins, or Joan Baez — when you mentioned his name, it was just a smile. He was such a wonderful, happy man. So for me, it was just a case of my saying, ‘I don’t know what business he’s in, but I’m in it with him.’”

Waterman will tell tales of his life in the blues and show photos from his extensive collection next Tuesday, June 25 at the Central Library as part of the National Blues Museum’s free film and lecture series. He will also be selling and signing copies of “Between Midnight and Day,” his book of photos and essays.

Before devoting his life to music, Waterman was a sportswriter and photographer in the 1950s. He became a features editor at Broadside magazine — that’s Boston’s Broadside, not the more famous New York magazine with the same name — which is where he began writing about folk music.

“In the 1960s, folk music was an umbrella,” Waterman says. “It covered blues, Cajun, zydeco, country bluegrass and even Theodore Bikel, who would come out and do Israeli songs.”

After promoting shows by John Hurt and Bukka White, Waterman got a tip that seminal bluesman Son House, who had not recorded since 1941, was still alive, and went on a quest to find him. He traveled to the Mississippi Delta in 1964 – “the summer of ‘Mississippi burning,’” Waterman recalls – and eventually located House, who (ironically) was living in Rochester, N.Y. at the time.

His efforts brought House back to his rightful prominence in blues history. “That’s what started me in this career,” Waterman says. “That brought me from journalism into being a manager.”

Waterman’s management of Son House also brought some of the other older bluesmen to his door, and Waterman took them on as clients as well. He formed his company, Avalon Productions, and eventually began managing younger musicians like Buddy Guy and Junior Wells, Otis Rush and others.

Prior to Avalon, blues musicians were represented mostly as an afterthought by managers who specialized in folk, jazz, or other genres. Waterman was the first to respond to the needs of blues artists exclusively.

“It was tough going for a long time,” he recalls. But once he managed to land Guy and Wells in an opening slot on a Rolling Stones tour, things changed dramatically. His fortunes also took a turn for the better when he met and began managing a Radcliffe University freshman who sang and played guitar and wanted a career in music. Her name? Bonnie Raitt.

Waterman managed Raitt from 1968 until his retirement in the late ’80s.

Over the years, he came into contact with many of the greats from other genres of music, including Bob Dylan, country music legend Mother Maybelle Carter, and many others. Always, his camera was at the ready. Photos of some of those artists will be a part of his Blues Museum lecture.

“I’m going to try to bring some St. Louis things to the show, too,” he says. “One of my favorite photos is a great early shot of Chuck Berry. And then I have a great photo of Etta James that I took in St. Louis. I have a lot of stories about St. Louis that I hope to share while I’m there.”

Asked if his being Jewish — he was raised in an Orthodox household in Plymouth, Mass. — had an impact on his career or the way he was perceived by the musicians he worked with, Waterman says, “I’ve actually given that a lot of thought. The great artist managers of my time – Albert Grossman [who managed Bob Dylan], Harold Leventhal [Woody Guthrie, Peter, Paul & Mary], Manny Greenhill [Joan Baez, Taj Mahal] — my mentors, my teachers — were all Jewish.

“There’s some feeling of compassion…the ability — not just the willingness, but the ability — to step up and help the needy. To help those who are disenfranchised. To be able to act on behalf of those who need your expertise. If I was able to do this, there was never any question that I wasn’t going to do it. The thread of Jewish managers and promoters is very strong, very great.

“For those who think that’s because there was money to be made on the backs of black people, that’s a quick shot of anti-Semitism. But you gotta let that roll off your back. You have a vision, you have a job. It’s something that you cannot deny, that you’re called upon to do, and the landscape all around me was honorable men. And I was proud to serve with them.”