Sophie Tucker

• Born: January 13, 1884
• Birthplace: Russia
• Died: February 9, 1966
• Place of death: New York, New York

Singer and actor

An acclaimed singer, Tucker performed a fusion of song styles that ranged from sentimental ballads to jazz.

Early Life

Although there is some uncertainty about the facts of her early years, Sophie Tucker (SOH-fee TUH-kur) was born in Russia in 1884, when her parents, Charles and Dolly (probably their Americanized names) Kalish, were en route to the United States. Perhaps at the family’s entry to Ellis Island, the family’s surname was changed to Abuza, possibly the maiden name of Tucker’s mother. After residing in Boston for several years, the Abuzas moved to Hartford, Connecticut, where Tucker’s father had a restaurant.

Tucker worked there during her school years, and it was there that she first showcased her singing talent. While still quite young, she married a truck driver named Louis Tuck, from whom she took the stage name of Tucker. They had a son, Tucker’s only child, and then divorced. Tucker was to marry and to divorce twice more. About 1906 she decamped for New York City and eventually found work singing in cafés, including a German beer garden, for about fifteen dollars a week and tips. An attractive heavyset blond, she could put over a song with considerable power and panache.

Life’s Work

Tucker adopted a blackface persona, like many of her contemporaries, and performed as a so-called “coon shouter” on small vaudeville circuits. Among her earliest soubriquets was “World-Renowned Coon Singer.” This modest reputation enabled Tucker to return to New York and begin her move up to the big time. The first stop was Tony Pastor’s famous Manhattan theater where her stereotypical black-themed songs included “Why Was I Ever Born Lazy?” and “Rosie, My Dusky Georgia Rose.” She also performed in burlesque as a singer, and she gained experience in sketch comedy.

In 1909, Tucker was signed to the famous Ziegfeld Follies. However, the show’s star performers apparently saw her as a rival and had her part severely cut. By then, however, Tucker had become a headliner in vaudeville. She abandoned her blackface act and began singing risqué, double-entendre songs, such as “There’s Company in the Parlor, Girls, Come on Down.” It was not only the lyrics that were suggestive but also the sly manner of Tucker’s delivery. She was apparently almost arrested in Portland, Oregon, because her songs offended the city’s standards of public morality.

In 1914, Tucker appeared at the Palace Theater, the most prestigious of vaudeville venues. By this time her persona was well established, with such songs as “Who Paid the Rent for Mrs. Rip Van Winkle When Rip Van Winkle Was Away?” and “When They Get Too Wild for Everyone Else, They’re Perfect for Me.” During the 1920’s, she toured England, performing in top supper clubs and on the most popular vaudeville circuits. She also fronted her own nightclub for a time and appeared on Broadway in Earl Carroll’s Vanities. Late in the decade Tucker received the title by which she became most acclaimed: “The Last of the Red Hot Mamas.” She had come far from her modest blackface days, performing smartly in expensive furs, jewelry, and evening gowns.

Tucker, while not gainsaying the daring songs that had made her famous, broadened her appeal with sentimental melodies such as “My Yiddishe Mama.” She developed a style that mixed singing and speaking directly to the audience during her songs. She did try making films, beginning in the early talkie days of 1929, but her parts were limited because she necessarily had to dim her outsized star presence to accommodate the more subtle style of performing before the cameras. Among her few films were Honky Tonk (1929), Broadway Melody of 1938 (1937), Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry (1937), Follow the Boys (1944), Sensations of 1945 (1944), and The Joker Is Wild (1957).

Tucker lost an important outlet with the demise of big-time vaudeville, and from then on she mainly appeared in nightclubs in the United States and abroad, where she was popular. She also appeared in English stage productions. By the latter 1930’s she had made her final Broadway appearance and was much heard on the radio. With the advent of television, which, in its early days, offered a vaudevillelike entertainment variety, Tucker’s career had another renaissance. The intimacy of the medium was perfect for her instant connection to audiences, and she appeared frequently on variety and talk shows. She became known for her many charitable works, particularly those in support of Jewish causes, including youth centers in Israel. Her funding established the Sophie Tucker Foundation in 1945 and the Chair in Theater Arts at Brandeis University.

Because of her versatility as a performer Tucker’s popularity continued well into her old age, although her voice had lost much of its earlier power. Her theme song was “Some of These Days,” which encapsulated her brassy persona effectively. When she was almost eighty years old, a testimonial was held for her at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, which drew some fifteen hundred people in her honor. In 1963, Sophie, a Broadway musical based on her life, proved to be a costly failure. In her latter days, Tucker continued to make light of her matronly girth with songs such as “I’m the 3-D Mama with the Big Wide Screen.” It was the kind of self-deprecation that made audiences love her. She died of lung cancer at the age of eighty-two in 1966.

Significance

In her prime Tucker had many rivals as a songster, but she was the one who endured long after most of the others were forgotten. This was the result both of her talent—an outsized physique produced an outsized voice—and of her sympathetic personality. She was proudly Jewish and had a genuine ability to seem like everyone’s “Yiddishe Mama,” the name of one of her greatest song hits. Her adaptability to many song styles also helped to maintain a lengthy career. She possessed a fusion style that encompassed everything from primitive “coon” songs to love ballads to jazz, sometimes within the same song. Her voice had the “teary” quality possessed by other legendary performers, such as Al Jolson, that was so beloved to Jewish audiences. It no doubt symbolized for them the struggle to survive and thrive that so immigrants had experienced.

Bibliography

Jackson, Buzzy. “Bad Women, the Early Years: Mamie Desdoumes, Sophie Tucker, Mamie Smith, and Ma Rainey.” In A Bad Woman Feeling Good: Blues and the Women Who Sing Them. New York: W. W. Norton, 2005. Puts Tucker in the context of other influential female blues singers and discusses their place in American musical and social history. Index.

Tucker, Sophie, and Dorothy Giles. Some of These Days: The Autobiography of Sophie Tucker. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran, 1945. The first full-length biography of Tucker, but one that glosses over many of her life’s unhappy events.

Young-Tulin, Lois. Sophie and Me: Some of These Days. San Jose: iUniverse, 2001. A lavishly illustrated biography that concentrates a great deal on Tucker’s family life as well as her career. The author is Tucker’s great-niece. Index.