Singing legend Barbara Cook performing four shows at Cabaret Jazz

File this under "Better Late Than Never." Twice.

Barbara Cook's career has spanned more than half a century, taking her from Broadway to the Metropolitan Opera, from London to Washington, D.C. - including a 2011 Kennedy Center Honors tribute.

But she's never played a Las Vegas gig, which made her May engagement at The Smith Center's intimate Cabaret Jazz cause for celebration.

That is, until a three-week hospital stay - for major muscle inflammation - put Cook's at-long-last Las Vegas debut on hold.

But it takes more than a mere hospital stay to keep the 84-year-old singer off the road for long - and Cook performs the first of four Cabaret Jazz shows tonight.

Oh, "my bad back has gotten badder," she acknowledges during a telephone chat from her home base in New York City.

And although Cook could only walk "three or four steps" after her hospitalization - "I couldn't even stand," she remembers - she could still sing.

"There was never any question about that," she says.

Not since 1942, when the 15-year-old Cook won $10 in an amateur singing contest at the Roxy Theatre in her hometown of Atlanta. And certainly not since 1948, when she moved to New York.

It took Cook a few years to move from nightclubs to Broadway.

But by 1956, when she played Cunegonde in Leonard Bernstein's musical "Candide" (singing 21 high Cs in the process), her silvery soprano had made its mark.

The following year, Cook won a Tony Award for another legendary Broadway show: "The Music Man," in which she created the role of starchy Marian the Librarian. (And, in the process, introduced such instant standards as "Til There Was You" and "My White Knight.")

Since then, on Broadway and around the world, Cook has entranced several generations of music lovers with her expansive sound and intimate style.

And after all these years, she's still exploring.

Given her theatrical background, it's no surprise that Cook's repertoire has emphasized Broadway favorites, as you might guess from the titles of her solo Broadway shows - "Mostly Sondheim" and "Barbara Cook's Broadway" - and such recordings as "It's Better With a Band" and "No One Is Alone."

These days, however, Cook's venturing out of her musical comfort zone.

"Recently, I've decided to have the courage to do some swingier, jazzier songs," she says. "I won't be doing a lot of theater songs."

Instead, Cook will focus on a wider range of vintage pop favorites, including "Let's Fall in Love" (music by Harold Arlen, lyrics by Ted Koehler), the Hoagy Carmichael-Ned Washington ballad "The Nearness of You" - "I've never sung Hoagy before," Cook notes - and "Lover Man," which Jimmy Davis, Roger "Ram" Ramirez and James Sherman reportedly wrote for the legendary Billie Holiday. (Whose low, smoky voice and limited range definitely contrast with Cook's bright, pure soprano.)

For years, Cook has kept "lists of songs I'd like to do or songs that seem interesting," she notes. "Little by little, I've been doing swingier things - and feeling more comfortable doing them."

Her four-performance Cabaret Jazz run also will include such relative obscurities as Ben Oakland and Jack Murray's 1933 "If I Love Again" (which Cook describes as "a real beauty - oh, my God, it's a great song") and another, far-from-obscure Carmichael classic: "Georgia on My Mind."

Granted, Cook was born in Georgia, but it's the song she's drawn to, not the state.

"I don't miss Georgia at all - I didn't belong there," she says. "I belong here."

She's talking about New York, of course, but Cook also could be talking about the stage - whether in a theater, concert hall or cabaret.

Wherever, and whatever, she's singing, "I just sing the same way," Cook says simply. "I try to really get in the groove."

For the first two decades of her career, that groove took her to Broadway, where her signature roles also included lovelorn shop clerk Amalia Balash in "She Loves Me," a "little gem" of a show that, at the time (1963) was drowned out by such brassy blockbusters as "Hello, Dolly!" but has since built a fervent following.

Cook returned to Broadway two years ago for the revue "Sondheim on Sondheim," earning a Tony nomination in the process.

The limited run was "great fun," she says. But while "it's wonderful to be in a company," Cook also notes that "there is very hard work to do in a Broadway show."

Besides, almost everybody from Broadway seems to be following her down the concert/cabaret trail.

"Do you know, when I was doing theater," every season brought more than 50 shows, she recalls, providing "so many, many ways for theater people to find work."

But "that's not true anymore," she continues. "Theater people have to have an act. They can't depend on getting another show. Just about everyone does concerts and cabaret; it's the only way to make a living."

Cook's been out on the road for more than three decades - and while it may be a bit tougher for her to get around these days, she still does manage to get around.

A few weeks ago, Cook joined John Pizzarelli (who's due at Cabaret Jazz in late October) for a Massachusetts concert that's "one of the best I've ever done - John and I were so hot!" Cook says, expressing regret that no video cameras were there to record the event.

"Boy, the rhythm they set," she muses. "It was great fun."

Little wonder, then, that she dismisses the prospect of, someday, not singing.

"No, honey," she says reassuringly, a trace of her Southern upbringing creeping into her voice. "I do it. I love it. I don't want to stop."

Contact reporter Carol Cling at ccling@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0272.