Looking more like Mark Twain with each passing year, a white-suited, snowy-maned Tom Rush took to the Symphony Hall stage Friday to celebrate 50 years of making music — and musical friends — with a three-hour concert touching upon virtually every phase of the folksinger’s celebrated career.

A reprise of the New Year’s shows he hosted in the 1980s, the Web-streamed concert affirmed not only Rush’s standing as a brilliant singer-songwriter and masterful guitarist but also his influence on fellow artists like guest performer Jonathan Edwards (“Tom’s been like a father to me,” quipped Edwards, one of many cracks about the 71-year old Rush’s age that were made during the show) and younger talents like Dom Flemons of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, whose three-song set was the evening’s most rousing.