Billed as the Legendary Jeff Beck, the guitar maestro walked onto the stage of the 4,000-seat MGM Grand at Foxwoods Saturday night decked out like a white knight. He had on a white T-shirt, white vest, white scarf, skin-tight white pants tucked into white boots with fringe and a white, the body naturally yellowed, Fender Strat with a white pickguard.

He launched into what has become in the past few years his traditional opener, Beck’s Bolero, a Jimmy Page composition from the classic 1968  Truth album with the Jeff Beck Group, which influenced most of the heavy blues-based rock that would follow in the 1970s (see Led Zeppelin). The album cut is heavily produced. In concert, the tune benefits from a scaled down, tight, spare version with his four-piece band: Vinnie Colaiuta, drums, Tal Wilkenfeld, bass and Jason Rebello on keyboards.

The tune set the stage for a set consisting of most of Beck’s best known tunes from his fusion era, which now spans the mid-to-late 70s to present day. The Pump and You Never Know, from the ’80s album There And Back, followed. Beck is still in command of his considerable and unique skills, playing in his hybrid style, sans pick, of using his thumb and fingers and producing a trademark sound with effects he generates  mainly through only his hands, sounds he has been noted for since his days with the Yardbirds in the mid-’60s.

The first ballad was the stellar Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers, from Blow By Blow, the album that really brought Beck to prominence as a solo artist in the 1970s. The tune, though, was dominated by Wilkenfeld, a 23-year-old female wunderkind, who took a breath-taking solo and received a big response from the audience.

Early in the show, the crowd was for the most part appreciative and respectful, after waiting 30 minutes from the announced start time, but didn’t go bonkers until mid-way through the set when Beck played his innovative take on the Beatles’ Day In The Life. That evoked a spontaneous standing ovation. From there, the audience was fully engaged with several more standing fetes.

Led Boots and Blue Wind, from the Blow By Blow follow-up Wired, garnered two of the biggest reactions of the night as Beck, soaring by this point, gave way to Colaiuta several times for concise, dynamic solos mid-tune.

Beck’s artistry is never more apparent though when he plays ballads, sometimes with a glass bottleneck, other times using a unique style of barely touching the strings with his left hand and controlling the sustain and timbre of the note with his whammy bar and volume control on songs such as Nadia and Angel (Footsteps). He, at times, travels over his pickups with his slide held from the top of the guitar and delicately plays the melody with perfect pitch and intonation. Extraordinary to witness live.

A highlight of the show, featured Beck taking his guitar off and standing in back of Wilkenfeld as she soloed up in the highest register of her bass while he plucked a funky bass line on the E-string. Several times, he playfully tugged the neck of her bass, forcing her more toward centerstage, but she never missed a beat playng in her individualistic style that contains heavy reminders of the great Jaco Pastorius.

Beck uses Charlie Mingus’ Goodbye Pork Pie Hat as an introduction to his own Brush With The Blues, a slow shuffle with a heavy, pounding riff that leaves lots of space, something many of his melodies achieve. The tune, from Who Else?, was another big crowd favorite.

The set also included Big Block from Guitar Shop (1989) and Billy Cobham’s Stratus, a track perfectly suited to Beck’s style that he uses as a tribute not only to Cobham but also Tommy Bolin, who toured with Beck in the ’70s before passing.

His set lasted about 1-hour, 15 minutes, then he came back to play a duet with Rebello and two with the band, ending with the late 1950s TV theme song, Peter Gunn, a tune made for Beck and one that would be a marvelous single.

Beck was inducted into the Rock ‘N Roll Hall of Fame one week ago as a solo artist. He had been inducted as a member of the Yardbirds more than a decade ago, but was long overdue for the individual honor.

I’ve seen Beck now four times, including once with the Jeff Beck Group in 1968 at Woolsey Hall, Yale. The other shows rank right up with this one. A Waterbury Palace show in the mid-’70s was part of a tour with Jan Hammer in support of Wired, in which he may have yielded a little too much ground to the keyboardist but was still the centerpiece, and a 2000 show at Oakdale in Wallingford in support of Who Else? with Colaiuta and Jennifer Batten on second guitar. That show was very close to this one, perhaps a little better overall. But there were moments at Foxwoods that just couldn’t be topped. So good to see him still at the top of his game.