The other day, Leslie Uggams was on her way to a rehearsal of her new musical, Thunder Knocking on the Door, when a young man stopped her outside the box office.

        “Tell me about this show,” he asked, not recognizing the woman in front of him.

        “It's about a blues family,” Ms. Uggams told him.

        “The blues?” he said, tentatively.

Uggams

        “You'll just love it,” she replied. “It's fabulous.”

        “You think?” he wondered.

        “Yes,” she said, turning toward the theater door. “But I'm also in it.”

        Leslie Uggams can sing. She can dance. She can act. Who knew she can even promote her own stuff?

        Add that to the long list of credits she has acquired in a career that began as an adolescent singing with Louis Armstrong.

        Along the way there was a Tony Award for Hallelujah, Baby! an Emmy Award as host of a variety show, a role on the landmark TV series Roots, her own TV show, several CDs and a clutch of movies.

        “My career is so eclectic,” says Ms. Uggams, 59. “To each generation, I represent something else.”

        This month, Mr. Uggams returns to her roots — Manhattan and the blues — in the off-Broadway musical Thunder, written by Keith Glover with music and lyrics by Keb' Mo' and Anderson Edwards. During its development, it was a hit for Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park in January 1999. The off-Broadway production will feature many of the same cast, including Marva Hicks.

        The year is 1966, and Ms. Uggams plays the matriarch of an Alabama family forced to confront a mysterious stranger who sweeps into town for a blues “cuttin' contest” in hopes of winning the clan's most prized possession: two guitars.

        The musical is infused with mysticism and spirituality, myth and magic. Ms. Uggams — together with co-stars Chuck Cooper, Peter Jay Fernandez, Michael McElroy and Ms. Hicks — sings tunes that run the gamut of blues styles.

        “It's a generation from the past that loves the blues,” says Ms. Uggams. “It should be rediscovered. You know, shame on us because the blues really has a lot of history. Blues and jazz is our American music.”

Uggams' career history

        Over coffee before a recent performance, Ms. Uggams surveys her own history — one that has echoed the changes in musical tastes — and laughs at how the landscape in entertainment has changed.

        “A lot of my actor friends say, "You know what? If I ever come back in another life, I'm coming back as an athlete or a rapper — because they get all the acting roles.' When I grew up, actors acted and singers sang and dancers danced.”

        Ms. Uggams began her singing career only a few blocks uptown, winning various radio contests with her voice and vocalizing her way into Harlem's Apollo Theater during its glory days.

        “I would stand in the wings and watch every little move and study every little thing and think, "OK, why is the audience jumping to their feet for this person?' So I'm a sponge and I think that pays off.”

        She soaked up performances by such stylists as Dinah Washington and Sarah Vaughan. Armstrong became a family friend and Ella Fitzgerald would feed her ice cream, complaining Ms. Uggams looked like a string bean.

        “Because I was a baby, they took me under their wing,” she recalls. “I really didn't realize that I was working with legends.”

        Though her path was hardly easy as an African-American woman, Ms. Uggams is sympathetic to young actors trying to make it today.

        “When I was growing up, television had a lot of kid shows and contests for young kids and you could learn your craft. You could be bad and you didn't get punished. Today, if you're bad, that's it — your life is over,” she says.

        Ms. Uggams and husband Grahame Pratt know all about the pitfalls of today's business: They've nurtured two rising performers — a daughter and a son who are learning how impressive mom's career has been.

        Their daughter, Danielle, sings in a choir and recently performed at the Apollo, where she unexpectedly found her mother's face beaming down as part of a mural in the lobby.

        “You were a part of history,” Danielle excitedly told her mother when she got home. Mom also gets a kick out of the fact that her kids are beginning to appear in theaters she used to play.

        “It's fun seeing it through their eyes,” she says.

        Even so, Ms. Uggams was not initially thrilled that her kids would be following in her footsteps. It may be genetic: Ms. Uggams' mother had been a Cotton Club dancer and her dad briefly sang with the Hall Johnson Choir.

        “My first thought was, "What are you crazy? You mean you're not going to be a doctor or a lawyer or anything like that?' ” she recalls telling them.

        “My husband said, "What do you expect them to be? Brain surgeons? I mean, come on. They've been around music all their life. Why are you so shocked?' ”

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