Raspy Redbone brings his ragtime to the Bing

For some people, “retro” means the 1990s. For Leon Redbone, it means the 1930s and 1920s.

Redbone, who performs tonight at the Bing Crosby Theater, is known for his vivid and loving renditions of American jazz, blues, Tin Pan Alley and ragtime standards.

His songs have titles like “Lulu’s Back in Town,” “Your Feets Too Big” and “Polly Wolly Doodle.”

Rolling Stone magazine famously said his raspy vocals are like listening to a scratchy 78-rpm record. That’s the charm of Redbone’s act, which should fit in perfectly at the Bing Crosby Theater, where the young Bing himself used to do novelty tunes like “Sleepy Time Gal” on kazoo, while whacking away on a cymbal.

Like Bing in those days, a Redbone show features equal parts comedy and song.

“I’m just a vehicle … not so much for the particular kind of music I prefer, music from an earlier time, as for a mood that music conveys,” Redbone told the Toronto Star in 2007. “I don’t rehearse. There’s nothing studied in what I do. I operate on a completely haphazard level … I never know what the next song is going to be.”

The songs and the genres may be Bing-like, but Redbone’s voice is on the opposite, raspy, end of the croon-o-meter. The Music Hound’s “Essential Album Guide to Folk Music” calls it “equal parts Jelly Roll Morton, Mark Twain, Tiny Tim and Jiminy Cricket.”

Chances are, you’ve heard Redbone’s distinctive voice even if you weren’t aware of it.

He croaked out the famous Budweiser jingle, “This Bud’s For You.” He did the title song to the TV sitcom, “Mr. Belvedere.” He sang “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” over the closing credits of the 2003 film, “Elf.” He has even been the singing dog in a dog-food commercial.

He received rapturous reviews when he first burst onto the Canadian and American folk scenes in the early 1970s. Rolling Stone praised his first album “On the Track,” saying it was a “lovely album of pre-World War II American music.” But then the novelty wore off when his subsequent albums were, essentially, more of the same.

However, Redbone has created a long and enduring career by exploring this underappreciated era of American music. He has also remained a popular live act because of his vaudevillian’s commitment to giving the audience a complete, one-man-show experience.