Richard Thompson remembers standing outside his sister’s bedroom door as a young boy, listening to the records she was playing on her Dancette record player, and marvels. Easily one of modern folk-rock’s greatest guitarists, an influence to generation after generation of songwriters and musicians, the affable Brit points to an unexpected musical inspiration: Jerry Lee Lewis.

“The way I play the guitar it is very much more like a pianist than a guitarist,” he says. “All those Jerry Lee records she played. It still gives me this primeval surge. I want to cause sexual mayhem when I hear it. And I know it’s nostalgia for that moment. I’m seven years old with my ear against her bedroom wall and I can feel it.”

Thompson made his debut in the late 60s with Fairport Convention, went on to make several albums in the 70s with his wife Linda Thompson, culminating in the seminal Shoot Out The Lights, and has continued a solo career as unparalleled as it is varied.

On Thursday, June 27 he opens this summer’s MV Concert Series with a show at the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown beginning at 8 p.m. It will be his first visit to the Vineyard.

For the 70-year old, who received an appointment to Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2011 for contributions to music, it is the way music rises, merges and mutates that matter. He understands the myriad ways music works and loves a challenge. He recently completed the soundtrack for Erik Nelson’s documentary The Cold Blue, honoring World War II fighters and incorporating William Wiler’s 1942 footage actually shot on missions with the flyers.

“It’s an extraordinary piece of work,” he says of the film, as well as supporting art in another medium. “When it’s your work, you’re allowed to have an ego. On a film score, you lose that at the door. Once you turn it in, you have to be ready for them to change it around or move things. You very much underwrite to be sympathetic to the picture and the visual element. Here, it’s quite emotional and poignant.”

The same could be said for Thompson’s songs. His achingly beautiful The Dimming of the Day, alone, has been recorded by Bonnie Raitt, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Alison Krauss, the Neville Brothers and the Corrs. Patty Loveless had a #1 country hit with a Cajun-fried Tear Stained Letter and Texas icon Robert Earl Keen captured 52 Vincent Black Lightning on his critically lauded Bluegrass Sessions.

Americana kingpin Buddy Miller, who cut Thompson’s taut Keep Your Distance with his wife Julie on Buddy & Julie Miller, also produced Thompson’s 2013 Electric. Of working with the multiple Grammy nominee, Millers marvels: “His Hand of Kindness really pulled me in, just the playing, so when he made the record here with only Taras [Prodaniuk, bass/vocals] and Michael [Jerome, drums/vocals], I knew I was in for some great playing, some great songs and a week long guitar lesson.

“He’s not just a Celtic folk player, which some people think because of the early recordings. He’s one of those sponges that takes from everywhere, mixes it all up and it comes out as something else. It’s the magic. And he is so very daring. The first time I saw him, he was out on a limb — and I think he likes to get himself to a scary place, somewhere just impossible to see how to get himself out.”

Miller pauses for a moment. “He’s an escape artist.”

Thompson laughs when he hears that.

“My father had jazz records, and he’d put on Earl Hines, who would get himself into corners all the time. I’d listen to his solos, and think, ‘How will he get out of that?!’ He was always putting himself on ledges and really tricky places, so to watch what he did was exciting.”

That ethos marks Thompson’s live performances. Conceding he doesn’t make a set list until perhaps an hour, or even 30 minutes before the show, he seeks to balance what he thinks fans want to hear with the things he wants to play.

“You don’t want to pander to them, but you do want to pull them forward with new music, to grow their experience.”

He also acknowledges reading the audience’s mood and being willing to honor the occasional shouted request.

“Yoyo Ma said, ‘Make the music alive in people’s hearts. I want to bring it to life for the people, to play music that moves them and connects you. All this energy that gets created when you do this. What could be better?”

If he never achieved the level of fame Sirs Paul McCartney and Elton John attained, the son of a Scotland Yard detective acknowledges he’s fine with the way his life’s turned out. Laughing, he admits, “It sounds perverse to say ‘I’m lucky, because I’ve not had hit records,’ but you see acts who’ve been doing it for 30 years and their eyes are kind of dead. They’re hackneyed and going through it. . . It becomes a musical trap. I don’t blame people. Mortgages have to be paid.”

“You have to grow musically,” he adds. “If you’re standing still, it’s like a multi-national company, [being] still is like you’re going backwards.”

Miller concurs about Thompson’s staggering curiosity. “I have instruments all over the walls, the shelves, everywhere. . . and he would pick up something, an autoharp, say, then tell me, ‘Lets double the guitar with this!’ It was always unexpected and changed things in very good ways.”

“I’m always looking at different forms of harmony and musical traditions,” Thompson says. “I want to see how else I can grow or push the music. If you go back to the’60s and ‘70s, there was a collision of things, and there was a lot of energy around it, a lot of discovery.

“[Music’s] always moving. The songs of mine that I like, I like a different one every day. It’s a fickle thing. The one I like, I’ll play it for several days, then tire of it. And I’m always writing new things.”

He won’t name it, but Thompson has a new song 95 per cent finished. Written just yesterday, if he gets “a few miracle tweaks,” he just might play it on the Vineyard. For a first time visitor to the Island, what better way to christen a song?

The MV Concert Series continues all summer long and features in the coming weeks Black Violin on June 30, Jonathan Richman on July 2 and Steve Earle on July 9. Visit mvconcertseries.com.