Reason to believe

The ads blare, “From ‘Maggie May’ to ‘The Great American Songbook’.”

Hmm. Something’s missing there. Like, for instance, the early years – just about the most creative years of Rod Stewart’s career.

“Maggie May” was Stewart’s first hit in 1971, and “The Great American Songbook, Vols. I and II” are his current albums of American standards. The first half of his show Friday at the Spokane Arena will draw on his string of 33 chart hits, while the second half will put him in front of an orchestra to sing Gershwin and Hoagy Carmichael.

But as old-line fans already know, most of the best Rod came even before “Maggie May.” In fact, he was one of the finest singers and most sensitive songwriters in rock history. Entire generations of listeners, brought up on Stewart schlock like “Hot Legs” (1978), will refuse to believe this. But the evidence is ample.

“Before he married models, before he cared if you thought he was sexy, before he crooned pablum like ‘Forever Young,’ Rod Stewart was a rock ‘n’ roll singer/songwriter with a sharp eye for detail and the ability to suck you into his world and make you feel welcome, as if you were among friends,” says the “All Music Guide,” a guide to essential albums.

“Stewart’s boozy, good-timey spirit allowed him to find humor in even the darkest corners of life, and he had the heart of a born rocker,” the book adds.

For proof, just consider the material he made before he morphed into Rod the preening sex god.

For instance, there’s the legendary “Gasoline Alley,” his folk-tinged, homemade-sounding 1970 solo album.

The title song, written by Stewart and guitarist Ronnie Wood (Stewart’s constant musical collaborator of the era), is a cheery, if pensive, ode to a working-class hometown, containing this verse: “When the weather’s better and the rails unfreeze / and the wind don’t whistle ‘round my knees / I’ll put on my weddin’ suit and catch the evening train / I’ll be home before the milk’s upon the door.”

Doesn’t that sound more evocative than “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?,” his ridiculous 1978 hit?

“Gasoline Alley” also contains a rollicking, fiddle-driven country fable, “Cut Across Shorty,” about “a country boy named Shorty, and a city boy named Dan, who had to prove who could run the fastest, to wed Miss Lucy’s hand.” It also has some searing old-school rock with Bobby Womack’s “It’s All Over Now.”

The “All-Music Guide” says the album conjures “the despair and humor of Woody Guthrie.”

Yes, kids, that’s right: Rod Stewart being compared to Woody Guthrie. Go to iTunes and download “Gasoline Alley” and you’ll understand why.

But even before “Gasoline Alley,” Stewart made his mark on the U.K. rock world as the lead singer of two legendary bands, the Jeff Beck Group and the Faces.

Stewart was an unknown quantity when he joined the Jeff Beck Group in 1966. Beck was the star, yet it didn’t take long for Stewart to establish that he had the rarest gift in rock: an utterly distinctive and expressive vocal style. The 1969 song “I Ain’t Superstitious” shows that Stewart had already learned to use his gravelly voice as a lead instrument in counterpoint to Beck’s virtuoso wah-wah guitar.

In 1969, Stewart and Wood both left Beck and joined the Faces, formerly known as the Small Faces and best known for a psychedelic hit with “Itchycoo Park” in 1968.

With the still relatively unknown Stewart at the microphone, they soon established a cult following for their rambunctious live performances. Anchored by guitarist Wood (who went on to the Rolling Stones), bass player Ronnie Lane and drummer Kenney Jones (who went on to the Who), they were famous for what “The Encyclopedia of Rock Stars” calls their “lads-night-out brand of rock and shambolic stage presence.”

Their biggest chart hit was the wild and wooly “Stay With Me,” one of Stewart’s highest-energy performances, released after he became a star.

So there was already a catalog of top-quality Stewart music even before the album “Every Picture Tells a Story” was released in 1971, with “Maggie May” as the hit single.

That album is widely considered Stewart’s best ever – and for good reason. It had the homespun, amiable feel of “Gasoline Alley,” but with even better material.

The title track, a memoir Stewart wrote in the style of an operatic recitative (a kind of sung narrative), may be his best song, period. The album also had the sensitive “Reason to Believe” and “Tomorrow Is a Long Time.” It even had Stewart backed by the Faces in the boisterous Temptations cover, “(I Know) I’m Losing You.”

It was, deservingly, a monster success and went to No. 1 for four weeks.

Far from being the beginning of Stewart’s creative life, it turned out to be the peak. As the “Rolling Stone Record Guide” puts it, within a few years he “decided to become a sex symbol rather than a rock ‘n’ roller.” He continued to churn out hits, including 1976’s “Tonight’s the Night” and 1978’s “You’re In My Heart,” which led inexorably to “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy.”

But the Rod Stewart with good taste never went completely away, as evidenced by the fact that even Stewart later expressed embarrassment about “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy.” According to the “Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll,” Stewart has donated all of that song’s royalties (reportedly more than $1 million) to UNICEF.

Also, he has continued to dip back into the material from his most fertile creative period, scoring a 1993 hit with an “MTV Unplugged” version of “Reason to Believe.”

You might even say the “Great American Songbook” projects have been somewhat of a return to form. At least he’s using The Voice on quality material, in this case, songs from the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s. One more volume is still to come, due this fall.

Yet the best news of all is that Stewart is making plans to return to his roots. After the last “Great American Songbook” CD, he plans to collaborate on an album with the man who was there for all of the great, early albums: Ronnie Wood.