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Tom Rush celebrates 50 years with his friends

Tom Rush, with Paul Guzzone on bass, performing on Friday at Symphony Hall.MATTHEW J. LEE/GLOBE STAFF

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.

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Rush opened with "Hot Tonight," a promise of lively times to come, then ceded the stage to his other guests, working both solo and in group configurations.

Among the highlights: David Buskin and Robin Batteau explaining hilariously why "Jews Don't Camp"; Edwards crooning "Hard Times (Come Again No More)," then harmonizing with Eric Lilljequist and Dean Adrien on the Lennon-McCartney ballad "Yes It Is"; Flemons demonstrating his extraordinary prowess on banjo, guitar, harmonica, and bones on tunes like "Your Baby Ain't Sweet Like Mine" by Papa Charlie Jackson; and David Bromberg (subbing for an ailing Nanci Griffith) moaning the "Statesboro Blues," with Flemons wailing alongside him on harmonica.

Following intermission, Rush took over with a set list that included Jesse Fuller's "San Francisco Bay Blues," from Rush's 1962 debut album; "Maggie," from "Ladies Love Outlaws" (1974); "Mama Don't Allow," a tune Rush learned from bluesman Sleepy John Estes long ago at Cambridge's Club 47; Joni Mitchell's classic "Urge for Going"; "What I Know," the title track from Rush's most recent album; the Geoff Muldaur instrumental "Mole's Moan"; and Rush's own much-covered "No Regrets" — "a medley of my greatest hit," as he wryly put it.

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Backing Rush, in addition to the others, were Paul Guzzone on bass, percussionist Marshal Rosenberg, guitarist Trevor Veitch, and Joe Mennonna on saxophone. Not a bad house band. And not a bad house in which to put one, either.

For an encore, Rush sang "One More Time Around the Sun," a new sea chantey of his, followed by "Wasn't That a Mighty Storm," an account of the devastating 1900 Galveston, Texas, hurricane. He dedicated it to the victims of Hurricane Sandy, a fitting note on which to close a milestone anniversary show that looked forward optimistically while celebrating its deep and enduring roots.


Joseph P. Kahn can be reached at jkahn@globe.com.