Delisco already had seven years of experience on Broadway before winning "The Entertainer" reality show offered him a shortcut on the road to Las Vegas. Photo by Ronda Churchill.

It helps to be humble in the anything-goes, nobody-knows state of Las Vegas entertainment today, where the star of tomorrow is chosen by a TV contest.

"How I got here, it's just crazy," says the single-named Delisco, who was chosen "The Entertainer" on the E! cable channel's knockoff of "The Apprentice" centered around Wayne Newton. "It's humbling, and it's exciting too."

The reality show was a poor performer in the ratings, but the better drama might emerge from its aftermath: How will this soft-spoken Broadway singer fare as a Vegas showroom star?

Delisco -- or J. Delisco, if you want to use the longer cryptic version of his name -- gets his first taste of Las Vegas audiences this week, as Newton's featured guest star at the Las Vegas Hilton. It's a gradual step-up to a year's worth of headlining engagements, beginning in September, that were promised to him as the show's $1 million-valued grand prize.

"I think about this a lot. I feel blessed because I feel like this just came to me," he says. "What other way could I have become a headliner in Vegas?"

It's certainly not something he sought out. And who would? Headliner opportunities are rare on the Strip, and most slots are taken by veterans such as Newton or big names in stand-up comedy.

Yet Delisco knew he was moving in some direction, if not this one, when he left the Broadway cast of the Elton John musical "Aida" early last year.

"I felt that something was calling me. I felt when I left 'Aida' that I was going to do something big," he says. He spent that time financing a six-piece band for club gigs to showcase his original music. Good timing intervened in the form of a casting-director friend who e-mailed him about "The Entertainer" auditions.

He blasted through "one of the best auditions I think I ever had in my life" in Los Angeles. A few weeks later, he found himself holed up in the Las Vegas Hilton, surrounded by cameras and nine other contestants for the kind of voyeurism that's become standard after "The Real World" and "Big Brother."

Delisco seemed to effortlessly sail past the competition, which included three working Las Vegas journeymen. His only moment of on-camera agitation came when he was heckled by comedian Paul Rodriguez. "I fell for it," he says sheepishly.

But for the most part, he made it look so easy that in the show's finale, Newton wondered aloud if he had been holding back. Delisco cites the same adage he did in an on-camera interview with Newton: "Don't sacrifice the permanent on the altar of the immediate."

"I just wanted to pace myself, feel everybody else out and, uhm, do my thing," he says with a smile.

Delisco got an early start on the competition while growing up in Jacksonville, Fla., and getting into the Douglas Anderson School of the Arts when it opened in 1985. He first attended as an eighth-grader, and was doing choreography for the show choir by his senior year.

The cast album of "Smokey Joe's Cafe" inspired him "to drive to New York with just a dream ... 'I'm going to move to New York, I'm going to do this show.' "

And he did. As luck would have it, the person already in the role Delisco wanted heard him sing at a piano bar. Broadway veteran Billy Porter -- who also staged a short-lived Stevie Wonder revue at the Venetian in 2002 -- steered Delisco to an audition that led to a role in the Broadway cast in 1997.

Broadway work in "Ragtime" and "Aida" followed, but the repetition and the eight shows per week wore him down. "I'm really not a Broadway person. It was something I wanted to do just to prove to myself that I could do it," he says. "I am a singer-songwriter first."

When he left "Aida," "I knew that in some capacity I wanted to be a frontman, doing some sort of show somewhere," he says. "I never really thought it was going to be Vegas, but I'm going to take it and see where it's going to take me."

Now that he's "The Entertainer," Delisco has been reading up on old-Vegas icons such as Newton and Frank Sinatra. And he's been to see Harrah's headliner Clint Holmes more than once. "I'm fascinated by the era," he says. "I never really wanted to do the old-school thing, but I would like to incorporate that and make it my own. Create something that's both retro and neo and make it great. Make it fun."

Getting his name on the marquee in the manner he did is bound to inspire no small degree of cynicism. But who would underestimate the power of sincerity from someone who says he moved to New York because "I heard that if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere," without a trace of irony?

For now, Delisco bides his time. Like the other finalists on "The Entertainer," he is now comanaged by Newton and his wife, Kathleen. Recently, they've kept him busy singing the new McDonald's theme song to company executives in town for annual meetings.

"I'm the man," he says, allowing himself a rare hearty laugh.