Tom Wopat appears Feb. 28-March 3 at the Colony on Palm Beach.

Not long ago, Tom Wopat spent two days signing autographs at a car show. We'll go out on a limb and guess that there are probably not a lot of Tony-nominated Broadway stars hanging out among the hot rods and cool cycles. Then again, there aren't that many Tony nominees in Hazzard County.

"I can't remember the last one I did - maybe 15 years ago? Everyone else in the cast that's still with us had done it. I was the last of the bunch," Wopat says of Ohio's Canton Hot Rod & Custom Bike Show, where fans of The Dukes of Hazzard, the classic show in which he came to fame, showed up at 7:30 in the morning to get a good place in line for his 1 p.m. signing.

Wopat, who comes to The Colony hotel's Royal Room with his swinging, rocking cabaret revue this week, has come a long way from his days as good ol' boy Luke Duke, jumping into the window of the fast-moving General Lee with cousin Bo and evading the law across TV screens on Friday nights from 1979 to 1985.

Directions, nearby dining

He's been a constant visitor to the Great White Way, from revivals of Chicago and 42nd Street to Annie Get Your Gun, for which he was nominated for that Tony, as suave sharpshooter Frank Butler. And after the Broadway and the jazz albums, including the recent Consider It Swung, you might think that the star had distanced himself from his shaggy-haired younger self and all of the lunch boxes, T-shirts and yee-haws it implies.

But you'd be wrong.

"It really tapped a nerve. People have a real sense of loyalty and comfort (about it). There was a deep family connection there, even outside of the Duke family, that included Roscoe and Boss," Wopat says. "When they got into trouble, we'd take care of them, too. They were the bad guys, but they were our bad guys."

Though he\'s had a long and accomplished Broadway career, Tom Wopat (left, with John Schneider) will always be remembered as Luke Duke from \'The Dukes of Hazzard\'.

Wopat thinks that the Dukes, even with the skirting of the law and the very, very short shorts on cousin Daisy, were just an update on some older, classic television fare.

"I was a big fan of Andy Griffith, and Dukes was that kind of show for me," he says. "It was a family, in a small town. There was no death, no blood, no real sex. You didn't need it. The stories were interesting enough."

As fond as he is of his days as Luke Duke, Wopat's been very busy since he left Hazzard County, particularly musically. He says his jazz recordings started after he made the cast album for Annie Get Your Gun, beginning with 2000's Still Of The Night, which had a "kind of Frank Sinatra feel," he says.

Jazz swinging natural to him

Jazz swinging has been on and off the pop charts for years now, with Michael Bublé being the most recent herald. Wopat admits that he wonders what would have happened if it had been, maybe, Tom Wopat that Buble's star producer David Foster "heard and got crazy about. I might have had a chance, if that had happened when I was 40. I wanna be a saloon singer. I wanna be up there and be cool and sing stuff that's interesting but some stuff is just plain fun, and I love that part of it, too. The shows pay for themselves, pay for the records, and I get to work with some great musicians. At 60, that's great to be able to say."

As you scratch your head trying to figure out how Luke Duke is 60 years old - and he's a pretty fine 60 - know that he's had fun working with some pretty good actors and directors, too. He's just done appearances on CBS' A Gifted Man and Blue Bloods, and wrapped a small part in Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, starring Jamie Foxx.

"He's a cool cat. We had the best time. We shot with film, which is unheard of, (because) nobody shoots film anymore," Wopat says. "Tarantino turns out to have been a big fan (of Dukes), and was a big fan of Jim Best, who played Roscoe. It's just a two-minute scene, all a set-up for a gag. But I'm one of the few people who doesn't get killed. And when you do his films, you pretty much know you're gonna die."

Wopat had an equally rewarding, if more subdued, experience in his small but pivotal appearance in HBO's film Taking Chance, as the father of a Marine whose body an officer played by Kevin Bacon transports across the country.

He says that it "was one of the few films where my participation has been remarked to me many times. It was a really important film, and the beauty of it was talking about the service of these guys, and not what the particular conflict is."

The added bonus? "I am now," he says proudly," just one degree away from Kevin Bacon."

Tom Wopat

Royal Room at The Colony hotel in Palm Beach

Tuesday -March 3

$55 for shows Tuesday through Thursday and $65 for Friday and Saturday

Call (561) 659-8100 or go to thecolonypalmbeach.com