Nick works hard at sounding like Sinatra and in the right kind of light, you’d swear it was Ol’ Blue Eyes. : Make It One for My Baby

The cabaret was dark when Nick Edenetti stepped to the microphone and waited for the spot to hit him. Moments before, he’d been introduced with a blast from the Nick Fryman Trio. The house lights were out. Only candles flickered on the white-topped tables.

But no spot stabbed through the shadows.

“Nick,” a voice finally said from somewhere in the darkness, “can you come here for a minute?”

You could barely see Edenetti’s face by candlelight. He seemed confused.

“What do you mean, ‘Come here’? I’m doing a show.”

“The spot doesn’t work,” the voice said. “I think the light is burned out.”

“Then get another light, for God’s sake. I’m up here ready to sing.”

They raised the house lights a little so you could at least get a better look at Nick. The voice in the dark left to get another spotlight somewhere.

Nick made the best of it. He was already at the mike, so he’d sing in the shadows. He opened with “All of Me,” and the show was on.

We were at Gio’s restaurant and cabaret in Hollywood. There were maybe 15 people in the room at the time, only some of whom were listening to Nick. The others were ordering drinks or just talking.

The waitress passed back and forth in front of Edenetti as though he wasn’t there, which, I suppose, is what she had to do. Through it all Nick just kept singing, like he was playing the Met or something.

I mean, not for a moment did he give it less than everything he had, whatever talent, experience and enthusiasm he could dredge up from years on the road, playing little towns and noisy clubs, when lights didn’t work and mikes went dead and a lot worse things happen.

“You get used to it,” he said later, after the voice in the dark had gotten a new light and they’d figured out which filter looked best on Nick, with people in the audience shouting suggestions.

“Things go wrong sometimes, but that’s OK. You figure they’ve got to get better tomorrow.”

Meanwhile, though, before the new light came, he moved in and out of the shadows as the audience grew and chairs scraped and people settled down and the waitress took drink orders.

He sang about rainy days and lost laughter, and when the song was over he looked out into the darkness and said, “You may not be many, but you definitely are few.” I think somebody laughed. Maybe not.

I met Nick when he was singing at a Burbank restaurant called China Den. He does a kind of impersonation of Frank Sinatra. A “playography.”

Nick works hard at sounding like Sinatra and in the right kind of light, you’d swear it was Ol’ Blue Eyes himself up there on the stool giving you “Night and Day.” Belting out “Chicago.”

I hadn’t heard from Nick for more than a year after China Den. He called once to say he was opening at a club in Hollywood, but after that, nothing.

Then one night I got home about 2 a.m. and turned on television to relax, and there was Nick on the screen with a group of comics I had never heard of.

The station was KSCI-TV, which I also had never heard of. Nick was acting as host, and during a break for commercials they announced that it was the “Nick Edenetti All Night Show,” from 1 to 6 a.m. every Sunday morning.

So I looked Nick up and sure enough, he was into the ninth week of being a kind of Santa Monica-based Johnny Carson, buying the air time himself, gambling that he’d make it, the way he’s always gambled doing clubs.

“I’ve got Steve Allen and Barbara Eden coming next week,” he said that night at Gio’s between acts. “You remember her from ‘My Favorite Martian’? Then Ann Miller and some other people.”

James Bacon, an old-time Hollywood columnist, is Nick’s sidekick on the show, which is mixed talk and variety. Nick calls him Jim McBacon. Like Ed McMahon. Get it?

At Gio’s, Nick was complaining that he’d been off the air for two weeks because of technical difficulties. It was never made clear what these difficulties were, but they were serious enough to cause five hours of test patterns in place of his show.

“We’ll be back,” Nick said. “Count on it.”

I have no doubt. There is a tenacity about Edenetti you don’t find in many people. An honesty too. He’s a saloon singer and he’s proud of it.

No castles in the air. No smoke in the spotlight. He’s what he is. Period.

I thought about that when he was singing in the dark, moving against a row of dim lights that lined a back wall, a silhouette with a mike doing “I’ve Got the World on a String.”

I thought about it as chairs scraped and people talked and the cocktail waitress said, “On the rocks or straight up?” and as Nick went into “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.”

There’s something about the guy I admire. Something about singing in the dark and singing in the noise. Something about always trying, no matter what.

When the spot came on for the first time, Nick spread his arms and smiled and bowed like he’d been singing for the queen.

He got a nice hand.