Saturday was the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Benny Goodman, the Chicago clarinet whiz and bandleader who was largely responsible for the birth of swing in 1935 and the subsequent marriage of jazz and American popular music for decade thereafter. In the 1940s, swing influenced the sound of the blues’ first electric lead guitarist, T-Bone Walker. Of all the six-string slingers performing today, nobody has preserved T-Bone’s legacy more faithfully than Roomful of Blues alumnus Duke Robillard, who played a polished passel of jumping tunes at the Linda on the eve of Goodman’s centenary.

Robillard’s jazz-inflected show was a welcome changeup from the usual Chicago-style blues (T-Bone Walker was from Kansas City, where swing held sway rather than the Delta sound), and featured the flashy fretwork that the 60-year old Rhode Island native has been known for since 1967, when he co-founded Roomful of Blues with pianist John Copley. Even though Robillard seemed a somewhat unschooled guitarist in that his fingering technique was very limited, he never ran dry of ideas, and his timing was killer. His gravelly, gritty baritone singing recalled that of Louis Armstrong, but, like Satchmo, he lacked range and his voice had little resonance.