OPEN POST: Manor Music Monday With The Sassy Sophie Tucker!

Greetings music sloots, and welcome to another edition of Manor Music Monday. It's almost Halloween, which means it's time for all good puddytats to watch out, because they could be snatched by dastardly foes. This does not include witches, as they were once known, or gayelles, as they're known at present, since then and now, they feed, brush and generally spoil those puddys they grab before finding them a good home. Surprisingly, DJ Li'l Scratch has managed to evade capture all these years, from friend or foe, even though he's on his 6th life and spans the ages. 

Speaking of spanning the ages - how's that for a segue! - the one and only Sophie Tucker bridged the eras from the 1800's to the 1900's, and like DJ Li'l Scratch, there's no reason she can't continue streaking toward infinity and beyond.

When you listen to her sing, Sophie will take you back to vaudeville's and burlesque's earliest days, a time she lived through, when the girls knew how to shake it for their supper while remaining (almost) entirely clothed. Known as "The Last of The Red Hot Mamas," she defied beauty standards of her day with her full figure and gave memorably ribald performances. Born in what is now the Ukraine, and emigrating to America when she was a toddler, it wasn't long before she started her storied career. In one of her early jobs on the vaudeville stage, she was forced to perform as a "coon shouter" in blackface. She loathed it, but got her revenge in the act by repeatedly taking off her gloves and wig on stage to reveal her white skin and blonde hair. Her bosses got their revenge by firing her.

Despite that, break-out success was hers once she stepped out on stage without a stitch of make-up, embraced her brassy, sexually-tinged personality and sang loud and proud, her voice like that of a trumpet. A precursor to Mae West, she was snapped up by Florenz Ziegfeld for his "Ziegfeld Follies" in 1909, and as might be expected, many audiences were offended, while some took to fat-shaming her. She wouldn't put up with the later. “All the married men who run after me have skinny wives at home,” she quipped and soon after recorded her hit song, "I Don't Want to Get Thin."

After she became her own star attraction on Broadway, she was hauled offstage one night by coppers and charged with obscenity for performing supposedly "risque tunes." Though the judge tossed the case, the scandal gave her show a massive box-office boost.

Innuendo is the name of the game in a lot of her numbers, like "You've Gotta See Mama Ev'ry Night" and "Fifty Million Frenchman Can't Be Wrong," and no one delivers them with as much cheekiness. Plus, she does what I think is a definitive version of "After You've Gone," wringing all the emotion from the lyric, but with a bracing frankness and lack of sentiment.

Given her success on Broadway and nightclubs, it was inevitable that Hollywood would come calling. The result was "Honky Tonk," a 1929 pre-code musical in which Sophie played a bawdy nightclub singer who strives to protect her daughter from nefarious beaus. Tragically, the movie is now lost, but it did introduce the songs "Last of the Red Hot Mamas" and "Some of These Days," both of which became massive hits given her bold vocal delivery.

But get this. Even though the movie is lost, the entire soundtrack still exists. I won't oversell it, but listening to the soundtrack like a radio show is a wonderful way to experience Sophie's singing and her delightfully "naughty" personality (Part One is HERE, Part Two is HERE). 

Sophie's career continued all the wat into the mid-1960s, where she was discovered and rediscovered and rediscovered again over the years by fans worldwide, even appearing on their favorite TV variety shows, like "The Ed Sullivan Show." And yes, she still made many clutch their pearls, while the intermittent fat-shaming continued, once from Paul McCartney, who joked that Sophie was his favorite "music group," the strained gag being that since she was so big, she counted as a group (hardy-har, Paul). She seemed unstoppable, but left us in 1966. 

Are you ready for more Sophie? You can't go wrong with this excellent compilation, which includes all of her hits and lots of impudent sass.

What are you listening to this week? DJ Li'l Scratch wants to know.
Till next time...purr, bitches, purr! 🐾

Photo Credits: Getty Images, New York Herald Tribune