Sophie Tucker, the Last of the Red Hot Mamas, was born 134 years ago today.
Tucker was a Ukrainian-born American singer, comedian, actress and radio personality. Known for her stentorian delivery of comical and risqué songs, she was one of the most popular entertainers in America during the first half of the 20th century.
Tucker was born Sonya Kalish (Russian Соня Калиш) to a Jewish family en route to America from Tulchyn, Vinnytsia Region, Russian Empire. The family appropriated the last name Abuza, settled in Hartford, Connecticut and opened a restaurant. At a young age, she began singing at her parents' restaurant for tips.
Between taking orders and serving customers, Tucker would stand up in the narrow space by the door and sing with all the drama she could put into it. At the end of the last chorus, there wasn't a dry eye in the place.
In 1903, at the age of 16, Tucker eloped with a local beer cart driver named Louis Tuck, from whom she would later derive her famous last name. When she returned home, her parents arranged an Orthodox wedding for the couple and in 1906, she gave birth to a son, Albert. However, shortly after Albert was born, the couple separated and Tucker left the baby with her family to move to New York.
In 1907, Tucker made her first theatre appearance, singing at an amateur night in a vaudeville establishment. It was here that Tucker was first made to wear blackface during performance as her producers thought that the crowd would razz her for being "so big and ugly."
By 1908, she had joined a burlesque show in Pittsburgh but was ashamed to tell her family that she was performing in a deep southern accent wearing burnt cork on her face. While touring later that year, luggage including her makeup kit was lost and Tucker was allowed to go on stage without the blackface.
She then stunned the crowd by saying, "You all can see I'm a white girl. Well, I'll tell you something more: I'm not Southern. I'm a Jewish girl and I just learned this Southern accent doing a blackface act for two years. And now, Mr. Leader, please play my song."
Tucker also began integrating "fat girl" humor which became a common thread in her acts with songs including "I Don't Want to be Thin" and "Nobody Loves a Fat Girl, But Oh How a Fat Girl Can Love."
In 1909, at the age of 22, Tucker performed with the Ziegfeld Follies. Though a hit, the other female stars refused to share the spotlight with Tucker and they were forced to let her go. This caught the attention of William Morris, a theater owner and future founder of the William Morris Agency, which would become one of the largest and most powerful talent agencies of the era.
Two years later, Tucker released "Some of These Days" on Edison Records, written by Shelton Brooks. This song would later lend its name to the title of Tucker's 1945 biography. One of the main things that affected Tucker was the decline of vaudeville.
On performing in the final show at E. F. Albee's Palace in New York City, Sophie remarked: "Everyone knew the theater was to be closed down, and a landmark in show business would be gone. That feeling got into the acts. The whole place, even the performers, stank of decay. I seemed to smell it. It challenged me. I was determined to give the audience the idea: why brood over yesterday?
“We have tomorrow. As I sang I could feel the atmosphere change. The gloom began to lift, the spirit which formerly filled the Palace and which made it famous among vaudeville houses the world over came back. That's what an entertainer can do."
In 1929, she made her first movie appearance in the sound picture, Honky Tonk. During the 1930s, Tucker brought elements of nostalgia for the early years of 20th century into her show.
She was billed as "The Last of the Red Hot Mamas," as her hearty sexual appetite was a frequent subject of her songs, unusual for female performers of the day after the decline of vaudeville. Tucker continued performing throughout the rest of her life. Such was Tucker's cultural influence.
In 1963, three years before her death, Paul McCartney jokingly introduced the song "Till There Was You" (from The Music Man) at the Beatles' Royal Command Performance at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London on November 4 by saying the song "had also been recorded by our favorite American group, Sophie Tucker,” in reference to Tucker's notorious girth” (Tucker never recorded the song).
Sophie Tucker died of a lung ailment and kidney failure on February 9, 1966, in New York at age 79. She had continued working up until the months before her death, playing shows at the Latin Quarter just weeks before.