Al Kooper is probably the least visible of Boston’s resident rock legends. On a good night you’re likely to see Peter Wolf or Seth Justman at a club or gallery, or cross paths with Steven Tyler at Bread & Circus. But Kooper spends a lot of time alone in his Somerville home working on music — mostly writing and demoing songs in a little basement studio. For years, in fact, almost 20, these songs have been heard mostly by his friends, the artists to whom he’s pitched them, and the people who’ve attended his infrequent concerts. That changed on September 18 when he got one of the music biz’s high honors: his own box set.

Rare and Well Done (Sony/Legacy) is a two-disc box designed and mastered by Kooper. It’s the first time a record label has asked him to participate in a reissue of his work, despite the availability of his recordings with the Blues Project, Blood, Sweat & Tears and more on compact disc.

" First I thought, ‘Oh great, I’ll have two CDs to really get into the minutiae of my solo albums’, " he says. " Then I realized I probably have five CDs of unreleased stuff, and if one CD was the demos and live tracks, and greatest hits made up the other one, it would make a very nice package. I came up with the idea of ‘rare’ and ‘well done.’ So we have a picture of a steak on each CD — one very raw steak and the other like shoe leather. We had the meat shoot, my first, at the Capitol Grille on Newbury Street. They hired a guy who photographs food for a living. It was interesting. "

If you’re unfamiliar with Kooper, check this bare-bones résumé: producer, keyboardist, and guitarist active professionally since 1959; co-founder of the Blues Project and Blood, Sweat & Tears; played organ on Dylan’s " Like a Rolling Stone " and was a charter member of his electric band; also played organ on tunes by the Who, Trisha Yearwood, Tom Petty, and many others; made two great blues-rock albums with the late guitarist Michael Bloomfield; signed the Zombies to Columbia; discovered and produced Lynyrd Skynyrd; also produced albums for everybody from blues boss B.B. King to gospel family the Staple Singers to art-rockers the Tubes to early alterna-rock mavericks Green on Red.

The new box set provides a dynamic view of the full range of Kooper’s musical abilities and the degree of sheer heart he puts into everything he does. On the " Well Done " disc lurk his heartwrenching classic " I Love You More Than You’ll Ever Know, " his own funky take on the first huge hit he penned, Gary Lewis and the Playboys’ " This Diamond Ring, " his gospel-fired performances of the spiritual " Bury My Body " and a live " Can’t Keep from Cryin’ Sometimes, " the lovely fusion experiment " Flute Thing, " and his famed versions of " Season of the Witch, " " New York City (You’re a Woman), " and " I Can’t Quit Her, " plus six other cuts. The " Rare " side has 19 tracks spanning 1964 to 2001. These include outstanding numbers like the anthemic tribute to the healing spirit of music " Living in My Own Religion, " the quirky pop workout " Rachmaninoff’s Birthday, " and the could-be country-soul classic " I Let Love Slip Through My Fingers. " There are also stone covers of the R&B gems " I Can’t Stand the Rain " and " Baby Please Don’t Go. " The latter gets a big-band rearrangement full of improvisations that equal the intensity of the Allman Brothers Band’s ensemble playing at their peak.

Kooper’s unheard songs brim with the same humor as his conversations and his artfully written autobiography, Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards (Watston-Guptill). Here are some choice lines from his reminiscence " They Don’t Make ’Em like That Anymore " : " I remember when we sat at the bar and thought we’d conquered the world/’Cause we always had the latest drugs and our choice of the prettiest girls. " And there are complete surprises, like a bubbling cover of XTC’s " Making Plans for Nigel, " an orchestral arrangement of " Hey Jude " that’s full of edgy playing, and a new demo of " I Can’t Quit Her " from this year that sports an even more soulful vocal than his original.

" My singing has improved over the last five years, " Kooper says. " I can’t really explain it, other than eventually you get smart. It was always my weakest card and I didn’t know how to get better, although my record collection is mostly about singers. Voice is my favorite instrument. " And he describes himself as a " huge XTC fan. They’re incredibly musical — sort of what would have happened if the Beatles kept going and were more intelligent. "

His hermit-like work habits aside, Kooper is also going out less these days because of a recent condition that has reduced the blood flow to his optic nerves, costing him about 75 percent of his sight. Nonetheless, he enjoyed some festival dates in Norway this summer and three September US dates, including a Scullers show on the 9th, with his current band the Funky Faculty. When he moved to Boston several years ago, it was to teach at Berklee College of Music, and he’s drawn his team of crack musicians from the ranks of the school’s instructors. " I’d love to get the Funky Faculty into the studio, " he says. " We could bang out an album in about three days. " Although he quit Berklee last year, Kooper was given an honorary doctorate of music at the school’s New Students Convocation last month.

Another place you might hear Kooper these days is on hip-hop tunes. He’s joined James Brown, Booker T. & the MG’s, Aerosmith, and other veteran artists as a favorite of samplers. He likes Jay-Z’s " Soon You’ll Understand, " which borrows from his " Love Theme from The Landlord, " best, but he’s also been nicked by the Beastie Boys ( " Flute Thing " ), the Pharcyde ( " Season of the Witch " ), and more.

PRIMAL PUNK. Willie Alexander’s been a star of the local music scene since the mid ’70s, when he relaunched his career — after a stint in the post–Lou Reed Velvet Underground — with brilliant pieces of punk-rock poetry: " Dirty Eddie, " " Kerouac, " " At the Rat, " " Hit Her wid de Axe, " " Rhythm a Baby, " and " Mass Ave. " The last was a 1976 single that’s considered the first shot of Boston’s punk revolution.

Alexander’s profile has surged and faded over the decades, but today he’s got a cult of fans that spans the globe. And as his brilliant work with his Persistence of Memory Orchestra in recent years proves, he remains a skilled composer of imaginative music and a lyricist who combines the bluntness of a pop tunesmith with the color and dynamics of the beat poets he so admires.

It’s been almost 10 years since Alexander last raided his vaults, for the Willie Loco Boom Boom Ga Ga: 1975–1991 (Northeastern) compilation, but he’s returned to them again for the new Loco Live 1976 (on the Japanese label Captain Trip). The bulk of the album was recorded by Birdsongs of the Mesozoic co-founder Erik Lindgren, who’s always known a good rock band when he heard one, and Jessie Henderson at defunct local clubs the Rat and the Club. These were among the earliest performances of Alexander’s great Boom Boom band, a loud and spirited ensemble that included the gritty virtuoso guitarist Billy Loosigian. The rest consists of demos and four-tracks.

Alexander sounds great on the disc, improvising nonsense syllables in " Hit Her wid de Axe, " whacking on his piano like a boozed-up minimalist Jerry Lee Lewis, crooning through a lovely version of his ode to his idol Jack Kerouac. For those of us who were around when punk rock was just a spark, it recaptures the energy and musical anarchy of the time.

" I had the Rat tapes, but I’d never heard the stuff Erik recorded until this year, " Alexander says. " That was a real warm period for me, pretty exciting. There was a lot of camaraderie, and it seemed like it was quite a time — maybe because we were all loaded. "

Lately Alexander has been collaborating with a friend who owns a studio in Gloucester (where Willie has lived since 1997), working up his own twists on " Sweet Lorraine, " " Ain’t Misbehavin’, " and other standards from the ’20s and ’30s. " It’s not that I’m going supper club or anything. These are song I’ve always ended up singing to myself, and I’m doing some experimenting, like laying down abstract music and putting these standards through that. "

PRIMAL ELECTRONICA. Back in the early through mid ’80s, when the term " electronica " was far from being coined and Jane & Jeff Hudson were performing as an all-synthesizer duo, their music — like that of Suicide, with whom they often played in New York City — was seen as an avant-garde extension of punk rock. At home in Boston they were heralded as innovators, not only playing rock clubs but giving concerts at the Institute of Contemporary Art and drawing on their video backgrounds (both are visual artists, and Jane — whose art is viewable on-line at http://world.std.com/~jhudson/ — still teaches at the Museum School, which Jeff left several years ago) to enhance their stage shows. At the peak of their popularity the husband-and-wife team opened for Public Image Ltd., Duran Duran, the B-52’s, and Ultravox; and with their album Flesh and the World Trade EP they laid down a blueprint of somber intonations and electronic percolations that would be embraced by the Sisters of Mercy and others.

They’ve kept working together and apart in other musical projects; Jeff went on to make MTV- and VH1-screened music videos and last year’s biker flick Black & Chrome. But as the ’90s faded and electronica caught fire, they found an increasing demand for vinyl copies of their old Jane & Jeff Hudson recordings, especially in Europe, where World Trade commands upward of $40. Now Belgium’s Daft Records (www.daft-records.com) has seized the day by licensing all of Flesh and more Jane & Jeff music and giving it its first CD release, a disc that will also be called Flesh. " They really paid attention to the electronics in the remastering, so you hear much more of what was quite experimental at the time than you do on vinyl, " says Jane.

Although they won’t return to the stage to perform any of the music from their Jane & Jeff group days — " It’s too hard to re-create the sounds of those early synthesizers, " Jeff notes — Jane is getting her guitar chops back together, and Jeff has recorded an album of contemporary lounge music under the moniker Space Bar, which he intends to release soon.