'MISS RHYTHM' RUTH BROWN'S BLESSED BLUES.

Byline: Lucille S. DeView

Listen to her musical laugh, see her gorgeous gowns, bask in her joy when she speaks of aging as "an honor and a privilege."

No teardrops from rhythm-and-blues legend Ruth Brown, 68, though "Teardrops From My Eyes" was one of the '50s hits that brought her fame.

Today, she's again in the spotlight here and abroad, after a singing-acting career that won her a Grammy, a Tony, and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

"I'm running a little slower these days, but I'm running," she said on the phone from New York. "It takes me a little longer in front of the makeup mirror, and when I shop, I meet a lot of ladies in the half-size department I didn't meet when I was young."

She prides herself on being a bargain hunter. "I tell my audiences, 'Now girls, everybody out there in my dress, don't get up until I'm finished.' Designers forget older women like good colors, rainbow things."

In her recently released autobiography, "Miss Rhythm," written with Andrew Yule, she describes herself as "a strong woman from a long line of strong women," including a great-grandmother born into slavery and a sharecropper-grandmother in whose fields she worked during her girlhood summers.

Brown learned to sing in church in Portsmouth, Va. She did local gigs when she was only 15; ran away to tour with a band at 17; survived a near-fatal car crash; endured three disastrous marriages; was caught in the Northridge Earthquake and lost everything.

Ah, but her triumphs! She recently sued and won long-overdue royalties from a recording company she made famous even as it cheated her and other African-American artists of their rightful incomes. She serves on the board of the Rhythm and Blues Foundation, established to redress such grievances.

"In those early days, we trusted people," she said. "After a decade of hits, I still couldn't pay the rent, so I shut the stage door and worked as a teacher's aide, a bus driver and a housekeeper to put my two sons through college." Today her sons are managers in her company.

In the mid-'70s, she acted on Broadway and in television. Last year, she had a four-week sellout at New York's Rainbow and Stars and toured 45 U.S. cities and London with Bonnie Raitt, whom she adores. "Bonnie gives without the cameras being turned on," she said.

She regrets that "we live in a time when people care about old money, old clothes, old records, old jewelry, but not old people." But she is optimistic.

"I know what I do is blessed."