By David McKay Wilson

On this rainy autumn Saturday night, her set unfolds as a Cook's tour of the Great American Songbook. She swings with a Duke Ellington standard. Croons a sweet melody with a samba beat. Then launches into a fast-talking number written by Eddie Jefferson, the jazz icon she listened to often as a teen.

Dressed in a flowing salmon-colored pantsuit and silver high heels, she moves effortlessly around the stage, long silver earrings dangling below a mass of braids. After a while, she pulls up a stool alongside pianist Eric Reed.

"I'm old enough to sit down and sing," quips Cook, forty-three, to the sold-out house of about five hundred. "You know, last year they were calling me young and dynamic. This year, they're calling me a veteran."

Tonight's show is the last of a three-night stand that showcased Cook and two other jazz vocalists, in a venue that opened last year as a home for the Jazz at Lincoln Center program. A massive glass wall behind the bandstand frames a dramatic view of Central Park and the silent parade of headlights gliding down 59th Street. Patrons have paid up to $130 to be here.

It's the latest triumph in Cook's late-blooming career, which has already produced a Grammy nomination and three critically acclaimed CDs. Her catalog is eclectic. She sings her own compositions, with titles like "A Lover's Lullaby," "Can This Be Love?" and "Simply Natural." She sings jazz standards, spirituals, even covers of pop hits by acts like Simon and Garfunkel and Neil Young.

Twenty-one years after graduating from Northeastern, Cook has emerged as one of jazz's leading ladies, with a growing following from downtown New York to Moscow.

"Carla is one of the most versatile vocalists and interpreters of song around," says Reed, who performs and records often with trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. "She knows exactly what she wants to do, and executes ideas with razor-sharp precision.

"She's a bad, bad, bad, bad girl."

If you dream of paradise, I hope to be there.
And if those dreams are not so nice, darling, don't despair.

— "A Lover's Lullaby"

In music-scene vernacular, of course, "bad" is good. Quite good. Cook's Allen Room set highlighted all the raw material behind her artistic success: a strong, clear voice; an engaging stage presence; and the ability to improvise vocally in a way that makes listeners smile.

Mere talent, however, isn't enough in the jazz world, as the homegrown American genre struggles to find an audience large enough to support all its rising stars.

Cook has thrived by juggling several projects at once and leaning on a strong network of supportive musicians, including jazz violinist Regina Carter, a high school chum from Detroit who remains one of Cook's closest friends. Carter played on Cook's first album. Two years ago, they played a double bill at New York's Town Hall. This year, Cook sat in on recording sessions for Carter's upcoming CD of songs from the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s.

"We had pretty much decided in high school we would not only play jazz, but would take the world by storm," says Cook. "We both came to Boston confident we could do it."

Cook could, and she has, as a quick look at last year's itinerary reveals. She led her own quintet at gigs in an array of New York clubs; they also performed in Germany. She narrated a video on the history of jazz that Jazz at Lincoln Center produced for high school students. She narrated a live Jazz for Young People program that Savion Glover developed, which melded tap with the music of Thelonious Monk. She sang with the Cyrus Chestnut Trio at Manhattan's Jazz Standard and the Terrell Stafford Quintet at the Kennedy Center Jazz Club, in Washington, D.C.

In May, she played Moscow with a quartet led by tenor saxophonist Igor Butman, one of Russia's biggest jazz stars. In June, she performed with Butman's big band at the first-ever jazz festival in Astana, Kazakhstan.

"Russians really know and love their jazz," says Cook. "It's what the music used to be here. I often have to explain to younger people that Duke Ellington and Frank Sinatra were like what Michael Jackson and Usher are today. They were big. They were the pop stars of their day. And the reason jazz has lasted so long is it's good music and it speaks for itself."

This includes the music of Eddie Jefferson, a singer who in the 1950s and 1960s popularized a style called "vocalese," in which lyrics are written or improvised to take the place of an instrumental in a well-known song. The lyrics Jefferson wrote were often tributes to other jazz musicians. He was murdered outside a Detroit nightclub in 1979, the night before Cook was scheduled to hear him sing there.

Cook, who adored Jefferson's music as a teen, includes vocalese in her repertoire today. In fact, during her rehearsals with Eric Reed for the Lincoln Center show, she learned he'd also been influenced by Jefferson's work. They plan to put together a show devoted to his songs later this year.

"Eric is the only other musician I've met who shares the same enthusiasm for Eddie Jefferson," Cook says. "My biggest challenge now is to find material I can do as a female. Eddie's songs are very male, and it's not like just having to change one word. I need to research to find some Eddie out there I don't have yet."

Believe it or not, I was the last to know.
Right out of nowhere, I let my feelings grow.

— "Can This Be Love?"

Finding the right songs is just part of the one-woman business Cook runs from the brownstone apartment she owns in Brooklyn's Fort Greene section. In addition to performances, and rehearsals, and studio sessions, music careers are built on scores of administrative tasks and artistic decisions.

Cook is single, has no kids, and says she'd have a dog if she didn't travel so much. There's a perennial garden in her backyard and a charcoal grill for summer barbecues. She composes tunes at the upright piano in her living room. Down the street is the Lafayette Presbyterian Church, which she calls her spiritual home.

If music takes Cook to the far corners of the world, it also connects her to her community. In October, she sang at a wine-tasting event that raised money for her church. A month before, she hosted an evening of music at a Brooklyn club that collected $5,000 for Habitat for Humanity's Hurricane Katrina relief efforts in New Orleans.

"I'm very glad I got to play in New Orleans before the flood," says Cook, who has volunteered to work on local Habitat for Humanity construction sites. "I was devastated by the government's slow response. So, instead of feeling helpless and angry, I put out the word for musicians to come, and they came."

Her brownstone in a block of five-story buildings is a marked contrast from the single-family home she grew up in on Sturtevant Street in the center of Detroit. Her father, Freddie, worked as a U.S. Food and Drug Administration supply clerk and moonlighted at his own barbershop. Her mother, Ernestine, a high-school guidance counselor and devoted church lady, brought the family to worship each Sunday at St. John's Christian Methodist Episcopal Church.

At home with two brothers and a sister, Cook sang and danced to Motown records, trying out her own versions of hits by Stevie Wonder or the Queen of Soul, Detroit's own Aretha Franklin. But, like Franklin, Cook formed her earliest connection to music through the church. At five, she became a member of St. John's Angelic Choir, donning a long robe to sing hymns, spirituals, and anthems praising a benevolent God.

By junior high, still singing on Sundays, Cook decided to learn an instrument. After trying the violin, she moved over to the upright bass and found a fit.

"Even to this day, I rely on the bass," she says. "I like the sound, and I like the bass because it is the base, the foundation of everything. When I write music, I tend to think of the bass line and work from the bottom up."

Cook's older brother introduced her to jazz, and let her play his Eddie Jefferson, Sarah Vaughan, and Ella Fitzgerald albums. She'd listen to local radio station WJZZ, which played the jazz gamut, from Eubie Blake's stride piano to Weather Report's electric fusion. It was a time when jazz was thriving in the Motor City. As Cook got older, she'd occasionally win her parents' permission to attend a performance at a local concert hall or club.

At Cass Technical High School, Cook played bass in the orchestra, and on Saturday afternoons she'd study voice and piano at the Detroit Community Music School. Fellow Cass student Regina Carter played violin in the orchestra and also took classes at the music school. The two girls became fast friends, singing madrigals in the high school choir, performing classical orchestral works, and studying music theory.

Each soon learned the joys of letting their classical training flower in jazz improvisation. For Cook, that meant scat-singing, using nonsense words or syllables to create the equivalent of an instrumental solo. Like other jazz improvisations, scatting doesn't reproduce the melodic line. It plays with melody and rhythm to create something new, and always different, in collaboration with other musicians.

"That's the whole nature of this music. The unexpected," says Cook. "That's what drew me to jazz. You are using your voice as an instrument, putting your musical ideas into sounds.

"There's a lot of unspoken communication with the other musicians," she says. "I sing a phrase, the musician plays another, and you go back and forth. It's great fun. But if you don't know the chord changes, it's very dangerous, and can end up a disaster."

While experimenting with jazz in high school, both Cook and Carter envisioned a life on the bandstand.But they had a major problem to overcome: Neither of their mothers approved.

"Our mothers didn't want the jazz thing," Cook says. "They said we needed jobs and pensions. But we knew we wanted it. We wanted to do jazz."

Despite her mother's reservations, Cook stayed focused on her dream, a single-mindedness she's glad in retospect she had. "I knew what I wanted to do, and I went for it," she says. "I highly recommend it for everybody."

Scent of the morning, birth of the blues.
Feeling a new dawn, finding your muse.

— "Simply Natural"

At Carter's urging, Cook decided to go to college in Boston. Carter was accepted at the New England Conservatory. Cook enrolled a block away at Northeastern. They remained close, with Carter often stopping by Cook's penthouse dorm room on the seventh floor of the Huntington Avenue Y.

Cook majored in speech communication, to develop her writing skills for a job in broadcasting orpublishing. It was a critical step in her music plans—she saw being able to support herself during her twenties as a bridge to a full-time singing career.

For three of her co-ops, Cook worked in Northeastern's Office of Community Affairs, helping to write and edit the CommUniversity Review, a publication reporting on events and organizations in the neighborhoods aroundcampus. Just before graduation, she landed a job editing newsletters for the Contractors Association of Boston, a trade group whose major project at the time was the construction of the MBTA's new Orange Line along Northeastern's southeastern border.

"I knew I was going to sing, but I also thought I'd like to write," says Cook. "Northeastern was a good choicefor me. I was from Detroit, and I knew getting a job after graduation was going to be an issue. Northeastern has that wonderful reputation of seeing that their graduates are employed."

Still, even as Cook focused on her studies, intent on earning the degree that would be her ticket to a financially secure adulthood, the bandstand was calling. Te Boston jazz scene was eager to welcome a singer as well-trained as she.

So Cook lived a kind of double life on Huntington Avenue, meeting and jamming with scores of aspiring musicians from the New England Conservatory and the Berklee School of Music. Her first gig came in 1981 at Jack's, in Central Square. Soon she was singing atclubs throughout Boston and Cambridge.

Accompanying her often was Cyrus Chestnut, an enigmatic young pianist studying at Berklee, who has since risen to the top of the jazz world. (He plays on each of Cook's three CDs; in November she sang with his trio for three nights at the Bistro in St. Louis.) Chestnut praises Cook's "melodic" approach, and callsher voice "natural and true."

After Cook graduated, however, five years passed before she felt she was ready for New York. She remained in Boston, letting her talent mature outside Manhattan's glare, singing at night and working nine to five for the contractors association. In 1988, she returned to Northeastern for two years, serving as anadministrative assistant for her former speech communication professors.

Occasionally, she'd visit friends in New York and dip into its vibrant music scene. One night, she even managed to take the stage at the famed Blue Note club for a three a.m. jam session.

By February 1990, it was time. Cook made the bigmove to Gotham. "Most of my musical friends had already left Boston and made a splash," she says. "New York was inevitable for me. This is the heart of jazz."

She was quickly hired as an understudy for Over Forty, an off-Broadway musical about women of a certain age. For six months, Cook earned a steady incomewhile perfecting the dialogue and songs she'd have to perform if the show's star ever got sick (she never did).

When the show closed, Cook faced the crushing financial realities of being an aspiring jazz artist. She needed to pay the rent while she made herself known.

First, she sold textbooks at a Barnes & Noble. Then she taught social studies at Satellite West Middle School, in Brooklyn. The curriculum covered twentieth-century U.S. history, so, along with lessons on the Depression and World War II, Cook devoted a week of classes to the rise of bebop and how trumpeter Miles Davis's music reflected American life in the 1950s and 1960s.Finally, in 195, she realized her music careerwouldn't progress unless she pursued it full-time. "I was teaching by day and singing by night, and I felt it was killing something inside of me," she says.

"So I simply said I was going to make this work. It was scary, but I knew I had to try.

Can this be love that I feel for you?
Maybe somedreams really do come true.

— "Can This Be Love?"

For two years, Cook taught music and performed in Switzerland and Germany, where, unlike in the United States, jazz is truly popular music. When she returned to New York, she'd been energized by her time away.

She sang with the Lionel Hampton Big Band. She appeared frequently with George Gee and His Make-Believe Orchestra at the Mohonk Mountain House, in upstate New York, and on Sundays at Irving Plaza, in Manhattan. At many of these shows, modern-day Lindy Hoppers from the New York Swing Dance Society would recreate 1930s dances. Cook often took to the dance floor herself during instrumentals, swinging witha crowd of regulars that included Frankie Manning, one of Harlem's original Lindy Hoppers.

Singing with a big band, Cook says, still gives her a thrill. "You can't beat that wall of sound all around you. And you get to be part of it."

Cook's return from Europe also kicked off her recording career. In 1998, she signed with MAXJAZZ, anindependent label just getting off the ground. That year, Cook coproduced her first CD, It's All About Love.

It was a stunning debut. The album earned a Grammy nomination for best jazz vocal. It also earned an Association of Independent Music Indie Award for best jazz vocal. The acclaim put Carla Cook on the map.Her second CD, Dem Bones, was released in 2001, a mix of original compositions, Eddie Jefferson's "Oh, Gee," and a take on the pop standard "Ode to Billie Joe." No less an authority than Down Beat magazine praised the sophomore effort, calling Cook "a unique and inimitable voice."

A year later came her third CD, Simply Natural. Cookwrote the title track one afternoon not long after moving to Brooklyn as she dug in the backyard to plant her perennials. The song celebrates all of God's creation—July rain, flowers that bloom, a baby's soft skin, people at prayer.

"I was ecstatic to finally have a garden of my own,"Cook says. "I wrote the lyrics, sat down at the piano, and the melody came to me. I brought the blueprint to the recording studio, and the musicians took it from there."

As yet, no date's been set to record her fourth album, though she already has songs in mind. Currently, she's focused on getting the Eddie Jefferson project off theground and on the live performances she has scheduled in New York and Europe.

She's also determined to do what she can to keep America's classical music alive, well into the twenty-first century.

"The future lies in educating really, really young kids about jazz," Cook says. "You play jazz to six-year-oldsand watch them dance. The little bitty ones are going to save us. They are so enthusiastic.

"You haven't heard singing until you've heard a seven-year-old sing 'Happy Talk' from South Pacific. To me, that's the sound of joy."

David McKay Wilson, LA'78, is a senior writer at the Journal News, in White Plains, New York. Lyrics quoted in the story were written by Carla Cook and are reprinted by permission of Cookin' Music.