Interview: Laural Meade on MS. TUCKER WILL SEE YOU NOW Celebrating the Life and Bawdy Humor of Sophie Tucker

In her tribute cabaret/theater act, Ms. Tucker Will See You Now, Los Angeles native Laural Meade shares her admiration of Jazz great Sophie Tucker by performing her rollicking songs, bawdy stories, and dirty jokes at the historic Gardenia Supper Club in Hollywood. It’s your chance to travel back to the glory days when such intimate settings were common place, both during and after Prohibition, where regular folks could hang out with Hollywood greats to enjoy an evening of dinner, drinks, music, and laughter in the presence of The Last of the Red Hot Mamas, a moniker Ms. Tucker earned throughout her lifetime.

Laural Meade in Ms. Tucker Will See You Now at the Gardenia Supper Club in Hollywood. Photo by Craig Allyn Cochrane

I decided to speak with Laural about the creation of the show, her partnership with Gregory Nabours on piano, her history in entertainment performing as Sophie Tucker, where she plans to take the show after Los Angeles, and others reasons why she feels this is the right time to salute the bawdy Queen of Comedy.

Thank you Laural for speaking with me today about your Sophie Tucker tribute show. Before we talk about it, please share about your own history of performing and teaching in the world of entertainment.

Like Sophie, as a kid I would sing for just about anyone who would listen! Growing up, she belted out popular tunes for the customers at her family’s kosher restaurant, while I was belting out hymns in the local church choir. She finally ran away to make it big in vaudeville and I ran away to L.A.’s experimental theater scene. After vaudeville faded, Sophie transitioned to the nightclub circuit, while I transitioned into being, of all things, a professor of theater. Sophie professed the good news of sexual pleasure and independence for women, performing live almost every day for 60 years! My life as a teacher hasn’t quite reached half of her longevity, and I don’t lecture on sex. But I certainly profess about musical theater, play-making, and play-going. And here Sophie and I are - finally converging in this new musical show about sex!

Have you always been a fan of Sophie Tucker’s humor and is that the reason you decided to create and perform this piece?

I’ve always been a fan of women comedians who work in her same “blue” vein - like Bette Midler, Phyllis Diller, and Joan Rivers. But I didn’t realize that Sophie was the first woman in the U.S. to build a career working blue - and that she paved the way for other women to be their bawdy selves in public. A real pioneer! Once I happened upon her story and music a few years ago, I was hooked. I decided to make the piece because of her saucy but approachable comedy, but also because of the ways she represented women like she and I - big bodied, loud voiced, and independent. She was an adult with a tough veneer, but also made herself completely vulnerable. I’m still inspired by that.

Please share the show’s history on how it came to be in existence, and how has it changed to become the show you are performing now?

From the get-go I wanted to create the kind of fun, interactive, adult vibe that she was known for. I listened to all her recordings and found songs that only exist in sheet music (she started out in 1906, after all!). Sophie sang three kinds of tunes: “I’m the hottest thing around” songs, “you’re cheating on me/I’m so heart-broken” songs, and topic songs - pieces that are specifically about her size (she just straight-up used the word “fat”!), her independence, or her age.

Laural Meade in Ms. Tucker Will See You Now at the Gardenia Supper Club in Hollywood. Photo by Craig Allyn Cochrane

I chose songs from each category that stood out as the most delightful - then built spoken material about her (and a bit about myself) around them. I also factored in ways to talk directly with the audience to make the piece about them as well. My first public outing was in a salon in Woodstock, NY as part of a festival my friend and collaborator writer/producer Chris Wells put together for a wonderful organization he runs called The Secret City. At the beginning it was kind of like a TED talk with songs. Since then, the show’s turned into a much more loose, revealing, and naughty affair. How nice!

Where have you performed it prior to now at the Gardenia Supper Club?

Los Angeles living rooms! When I first started workshopping the piece here, I wanted to create a casual but kind of heightened experience where people would know each other, and Sophie, much better before the night was through. But as we were all slowly coming out of quarantine and people weren’t quite ready to hit the clubs and theaters, several generous friends offered their homes for house concerts. We got their pals together with mine and I did a sort of living room tour. We’d get in some food and drinks, wheel the piano into the middle of the room and go for it. People felt safe but celebratory. Those parties were great!

Sounds like a fun evening! After those house concerts, have you always performed it in smaller, intimate clubs to mimic Tucker’s performance style?

In the summer of 2022, I played my first formal concert in Woodstock in a beautiful converted barn at a place called White Feather Farms. They run a great summer performance series and have a big ol’ gorgeous piano. Chris Wells helped me with some dramaturgy and direction. I found a local player and off we went - singing bawdy songs for a seasoned Woodstock crowd. Lots of them were already Sophie fans so it was a special way to start.

Gregory Nabours and Laural Meade in Ms. Tucker Will See You Now at the Gardenia Supper Club in Hollywood. Photo by Craig Allyn Cochrane

Has Gregory Nabours always been your piano accompanist for the show?

In L.A., I worked with two piano-playing pals: Fred Cassidy (who is a fascinating television producer/journalist) and Steven Argila (who is an amazing composer). They were such loving collaborators, making arrangements in rehearsal and jokes in performance. But their other lives called. Then Greg came on board through a bit of kismet.

Every once in a while, I like to check out what the great actress Sharon McKnight is up to (she did a Sophie show for many years). I was watching a YouTube clip of her performing at Vitello’s here in L.A.. and there was this handsome fellow accompanying the heck out of the situation. I thought “I gotta find that guy!” Turns out we had a mutual friend, and the next day he was on board. What luck! Greg’s a total theater person, a great player on his own and a sensitive, supportive accompanist. Because he’s channeling Sophie’s longtime player, Ted Shapiro, the gig also requires some charming banter. Thank the theater gods that Greg’s that kind of triple threat!

Why do you think Sophie was called the Last of the Red Hot Mamas and the bawdy Queen of Comedy?

Sophie was a marketing genius. She knew that a catchy nickname would attract attention. and that her audiences always wanted to see something new. So she constantly refreshed her songs, her costumes, and her image, along with her handle. For the first few decades of her career, she went through a bunch of tags, like “The Tetrazzini of Ragtime,” “The Syncopated Cyclone,” and “The Queen of Jazzaration.” They sound so musical to just say, and I love them! She landed finally and for good on “The Last of the Red Hot Mamas.” She genuinely saw herself as hot and the last and best of ‘em. In 1930, who wouldn’t want to go see someone named that?

Absolutely! Where did Sophie get her inspiration to talk dirty to people, much the same as Mae West did, and how did she get away with it? Wasn’t censorship in place?

From the beginning Sophie just wanted to be herself. She starts her autobiography with the story of how her grade school teacher told her she had “personality.” At first, she didn't know what he meant but came to realize, as she started to perform, that he was calling out her incredible charisma and her innate ability to connect with people. It also meant that she was drawn to subjects that would grab people’s attention - namely the risqué.

She writes about a producer who told her that, as a big woman, she had a leg up doing the “sex stuff” because audiences couldn’t see a fat woman as genuinely sexual. They’d think she was “funny, not salacious.” Little did he know, she would capitalize on being both! Early on she was arrested a couple of times for public indecency, but researchers suggest she set those up as publicity stunts. I buy it! She embraced ruffling feathers to the end, knowing people like a bit of titillating outrage.

Laural Meade in Ms. Tucker Will See You Now at the Gardenia Supper Club in Hollywood. Photo by Craig Allyn Cochrane

Do you have a few favorite Tucker one-liners from the show you would like to share that exemplify is type of bawdy humor?

As some of your readers might know, Bette Midler paid major homage to Sophie Tucker in her big stage shows, telling a lot of super blue “Soph” jokes. Turns out that only a few of those jokes were actually from Sophie’s repertoire. Most of them were written by the great comic Bruce Villanch (who also did a stint at the Gardenia back in the day). My fave “Soph” joke that Sophie herself also told goes. “I’ll never forget it, doncha know. It was the occasion of my boyfriend Ernie's 80th birthday. And he said to me, ‘Soph, I just got myself a 20-year-old girlfriend. What do you think of that?!’ And I said, ‘Ernie, when I am 80 I’m gonna get myself a 20 year old boyfriend. And let me tell you something - 20 goes into 80 a helluva lot more than 80 goes into 20!’” Ha!

I’ve always loved that Soph joke too! Where are you performing the show, other than at the Gardenia Supper Club which is just one night per month through the end of 2023?

For now, I’m just at the Gardenia trying to perfect the piece and build my audience. It's a great venue for that, being intimate, pretty, and old school. I can look audience members directly in the eye, which I love. The piano, sound, lighting - it all feels right. Although I’ve been singing my whole life, carrying a show on my own for an hour and twenty minutes is a whole other challenge. So for now, the monthly residency at the Gardenia is great - and thank you to them for their support! Between just the two of us (ha!), I am planning a few more house concerts on the downlow in October and November. I hope folks will find me on social media if they want to bag an invitation.

Are there plans to take the show on tour nationally or internationally?

I have all kinds of plans! The work now is to make them realities. With the spirit of Sophie at my back, I will be playing a regular run in Los Angeles in the spring, then will do a few tour dates in the summer, landing in New York in the fall. I’ve started to hear from folks all over the country on social media saying “come to my town!” And I will! I think there’s a real hunger for the kind of intimate setting you first mentioned, a place where people can share drinks, laughs and a sophisticated musical experience that specifically recognizes their presence. That’s what Sophie was all about and I want to keep providing it.

Why do you think Tucker’s strength and independent nature to be who she was will ring true to modern audiences?

Her story has a classic message we’ve all heard before but can always hear again: that realizing and sharing our authentic selves with others is the best way to make us all feel less alone. Let’s face it - becoming your truest self, let alone being brave enough to openly share that self with others, is really hard! And Sophie’s story recognizes some very specific people - women of size, older women, folks from conservative backgrounds who busted out. She preached for sex positivity (before we called it that) and radical self-confidence until she died at 80. Sophie modeled what an independent, empowered female life could look like decades before we could even imagine it. I’d listen to that story, especially when it’s delivered with a bunch of foul language and risqué songs, any time!

Is there anything else you would like to share?

Sophie’s star shone brightly while she was alive, but she’s since been largely forgotten. Some say that’s because she was a woman, or because she really hit her stride mid-career but kept working for decades afterward, or because her brand of naughty comedy had lost some of its shock value. Those things may be true, but to me they only go to her strength. Personally, she seems evergreen. And it’s an honor to share the good news she lived by: be confident, be honest, tell a dirty joke, and spread joy. Thanks, Soph! And thanks, Shari!

Thank you so much!

Ms. Tucker Will See You Now, writer and performer Laural Meade’s rollicking cabaret theater piece, continues at the historic Gardenia Supper Club (7066 Santa Monica Blvd. 90038) with a monthly engagement through the end of 2023. With special guest Gregory Nabours at the piano, Meade will perform the show Friday, October 13; Saturday, November 18; and Friday, December 8, 2023. Doors open & dinner service begins at 7pm, showtime is 9pm, $20 cover charge plus purchasing dinner per person. Those making dinner reservations by phone only to 323-467-7444 will receive a phone confirmation. Drink minimum is waived when having a dinner entree. More information at www.gardeniasupperclub.com

Please note: Seating is guaranteed for dinner reservations only. Show only patron seating for the 9pm show is offered at a $20 cover charge + a $14 drink minimum per person, based on availability.

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