Get ready, the “Last of the Red Hot Mamas” is back!! Sophie Tucker, the brassy burlesque and vaudeville entertainer was a legend spanning most of the 20th century. Sunday, June 7, at 2:00 PM at the Skokie Theater, 7924 North Lincoln, (in Skokie- Admission is $25.00 at the door, $20 in advance, with discounts for groups of 10 or more. Order by calling 847-677-7761 or online at www.skokietheater.com.) Chicago cabaret comedy favorite Carla Gordon will salute the great Miss Tucker.
Tucker would sell out at the famed Chez Paree and the Oriental Theater, belting tunes like “After You’ve Gone”, and her signature song, “Some of These Days”. With a career spanning vaudeville, radio, talkies, and even television (Remember Sophie on the Ed Sullivan Show in the early 1960s?), Tucker remained a star for decades. Although Sophie herself hasn’t been with us since the Sixties, thanks to modern day burlesque singer, Carla Gordon, Miss Tucker is making a “return engagement.”
Sophie Tucker called Chicago her “second home. While performing in Chicago, Tucker heard 'Some of These Days' played by its composer, pianist Shelton Brooks. It was presented by Tucker in 1910 at Chicago's White City Park. She recorded it six times, adopting it as her theme (and title of her autobiography). It sold a million copies in sheet music alone.
Her film debut in Honky Tonk had her sing 'I Don’t Want To Get Thin' and 'I'm The Last Of The Red Hot Mamas', the latter her billing for the rest of her life. Carla Gordon especially enjoys performing these tunes in her Sophie Tucker show.
Gordon says she feels a special kinship with Tucker, saying: “Sophie paved the way for today’s burlesque singers and comediennes.” Her bawdy humor and enormous energy had a great influence on the careers of entertainment notables such as Bette Midler, Joan Rivers, Roseanne and Margaret Cho.
Says Gordon, “Sophie and I are two big Jewish girls who decided it’s way more fun to make people laugh that it would have been to keep working in the family business.”
Sophie even found romance in Chicago. Married three times, Tucker never found herself short of admirers, and had a soft spot for glamorous ne'er-do-wells like gamblers, gangsters, saloon owners, prizefighters, auto racers and, back in the Roaring 20s, even a Chicago alderman named Dorsey Crowe.
Photo taken from http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3036/2702977412_5f3c0f7f1e.jpg?v=0.
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