Year: Day to Day Men: January 13

Armand: Old English

The thirteenth of January in 1886 marks the birth date of Russian-born American entertainer Sophie Tucker who was known for her forceful delivery of comical and risqué songs. She received billing as ‘The Last of the Red-Hot Mammas’ due to the frequent sexual subject of her songs, an unusual topic for female performers after vaudeville’s decline. Tucker became one of the most popular entertainers in the United States during the first half of the twentieth-century. 

Born Sofiya Sonya Kalish to a Jewish family in Tulchyn of the Russian Empire, Tucker immigrated to the United States with her family in September of 1887. The family settled in Boston for eight years and then relocated to Hartford, Connecticut where they opened a restaurant. In 1903 at the age of seventeen, Sofiya eloped with Louis Tuck and two years later gave birth to her son Albert. The couple separated after the birth and later divorced in 1913. After leaving her son with her parents, Tucker found work in New York City’s cafés and beer gardens where she sang for food and received tips from customers; most of her earnings were sent to her family for her son’s support. 

Sophie Tucker made her first theatrical appearance at a vaudeville venue’s amateur night. A heavy-weight person, she added weight-related humor and songs to her acts. In 1909, Tucker performed in the Ziegfeld Follies and was noticed by William Morris, a theater owner and the future founder of Hollywood’s William Morris Talent Agency. Two years later, she released her first recording of Shelton Brooks’s “Some of These Days” which soon became her signature song; her 1926 version sold a million copies and stayed number one for five weeks. In 1921, Tucker hired songwriter and pianist Ted Shapiro as her musical director and accompanist. He would remain with Tucker for her entire career and often exchanged jokes with her between musical numbers.

Tucker became friends with Mamie Smith, the first African-American woman to make a blues recording, and Ethel Walters, who became the highest paid African-American recording artist at that time. It was Walters who introduced Tucker to jazz, a music form Tucker later introduced to her white vaudeville audiences. In 1925, lyricist Jack Selig Yellen wrote “My Yiddishe Momme” which became another of Tucker’s signature songs. Now a successful singer, Tucker’s fame spread to Europe and she began a tour of England which culminated in a performance at the London Palladium for King George V and Queen Mary.

In 1926 Sophie Tucker re-released her hit song “Some of These Days”. It sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc by the Recording Industry Association of America. Tucker made her film debut in 1929 with a lead role in Lloyd Bacon’s Pre-Code musical film “Honky Tonk” which featured a number of her famous songs. This early feature sound film is now considered lost, only the Vitaphone soundtrack and its trailer still exist. When vaudeville was becoming passe in the early 1930s, Tucker turned to nightclubs where she could continue to perform for live audiences.

During 1938 to 1939, Tucker had her own radio show on CBS, “The Roi Tan Program with Sophie Tucker” and made numerous appearances on such programs as “The Radio Hall of Fame” and “The Andrews Sisters’ Show”. In 1945, she created the Sophie Tucker Foundation, which supported various actors’ guilds, hospitals, synagogues, and Israeli youth villages. Tucker appeared on many popular talk and variety shows in the 1950s and 1960s among which were “The Tonight Show” and “The Ed Sullivan Show”.  

Sophie Tucker served from 1938 to 1939 as president of the American Federation of Actors, an early trade union originally for vaudeville and circus performers that expanded to include nightclub performers. She continued to perform for the rest of her life with several tours to England; her singing at the Royal Variety Performance aired on the BBC. Tucker’s last television appearance was the color broadcast of the October 3, 1965 “Ed Sullivan Show” in which she sang “Give My Regards to Broadway” and her signature song “Some of These Days”.

Tucker died of lung cancer and kidney failure in February of 1966, at the age of eighty, in her New York, Park Avenue apartment. She had played shows at New York’s Latin Quarter just weeks before her death and had two years of engagements planned. Tucker is buried in Emanuel Cemetery in Wethersfield, Connecticut. 

Note: Sophie Tucker’s 1926 version of “Some of These Days”, which featured Ted Lewis and His Band, can be found by entering the title in the search box.