TORONTO -- Monday this week: Nine hours before Cookin' At The Cookery is to open in previews at the Bluma Appel theatre, and star Jackie Richardson is listening on my MP3 player to an Alberta Hunter song she hadn't heard before.

It's You Can't Tell The Difference After Dark, recorded in 1935, with lyrics like "I may be brown as a berry/ but that's just secondary/ You can't tell the difference after dark." It's cheeky, racial and sexually boastful, and Richardson bursts out laughing.

"That's her!" she says. "As far as the blues are concerned, that was the style of the era, a lot of double entendres. And she wrote her own stuff too. It was all filtered through her sense of humour. She told it like it is."

One of the unsung chanteuses of the early 20th Century, Alberta Hunter was the toast of Chicago, London and Broadway, a jazz-blues talent on a par with Billie Holiday or Bessie Smith. And then she pulled a disappearing act, quitting in the '50s to become a nurse at age 60.

She stayed retired for 22 years before coming back at age 82 for a series of shows at Greenwich Village's The Cookery -- a gig that turned into a seven-year booking.

Marion J. Caffey's Cookin' At The Cookery -- which opens Friday -- is set on the night of that first show back, and features tunes like Rough And Ready Man, Down Hearted Blues and The Love I Have For You.

Like most women who've absorbed Hunter's oeuvre in the play, veteran Canadian belter Jackie Richardson has a bigger voice than her character did.

"I do have a big mouth," she says, laughing. "But with Alberta Hunter, it was all phrasing. For me naturally, I tend to backphrase and she tends to phrase right on the beat or forward. Concentrating on that gets me in touch with her style.

"Whatever she sang was in the style of the time. There was the way things were delivered in the '30s, and when she came back in her 80s, it was like, well, I just call it more livin' in her voice.

"From the clips I've seen, just to see an 82-year-old woman standing up there with this love of life and the sense of humour comin' through in her eyes. She was also so sensual, just an absolutely incredible person."

And overlooked, especially in the context of her contemporaries. "She was there at a time, from 1917 until the 1950s, when she sang and performed and was friends with anybody who was anybody. Louis Armstrong (one of several characters essayed in Cookery by Montego Glover) was the absolute best singer, phrasing wise, in the world. And that rubbed off on her, just like Louis rubbed off on Billie Holiday.

"But also she was a very private person, and I don't think there's that much dirt about her."

Hunter had a same-sex preference, which doesn't go unmentioned in the show. "I think a lot of people back then were bisexual. She just handled herself with a lot of style and class."

Cookin' At The Cookery caps a busy year for Richardson, who in January will join the production of Djanet Sears' Adventures Of A Black Girl In Search Of God. Earlier, she filmed Welcome To Moosetown with Ray Romano and Gene Hackman. And CBC Radio listeners have heard her as the Canadian host of Martin Scorsese's blues series. In late December, she'll host a supplementary episode devoted to the history of Canadian blues.

Could she ever "retire" like Alberta Hunter? "I just can't imagine it," she says, with a laugh. "As long as there's work, I'm working."