Born: 13 January 1886, Ukraine
Died: February 9 1966
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Sonya Kalish, Sophie Abuza, Sophie Tuck
The following is republished from the Library of Congress. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
Sophie Tucker was born Sonya Kalish to a Russian-Jewish family on January 13. The year was either 1884 or 1886. Family legend has it that baby Sonya was born along the road somewhere in Russia or Poland during her family’s flight to the United States. Family legend also explains the name change from Kalish to Abuza during this time: Sophie’s father sought to avoid detection by borrowing the identity of an Italian friend he met along the way. The Abuza family settled in Boston during an era when millions of Eastern Europeans, many of them Jewish, made their way to new homes in America. The immigration station at Ellis Island was opened in 1892 to process the influx of new arrivals, serving as a portal for 12 million people before it closed in 1954.
Sophie Abuza began her career as an entertainer while working as a waitress at her family’s restaurant in Hartford, Connecticut, where the Abuzas had moved when she was young. Sophie earned good tips for adding songs and humor to the food service. In her teens she attended local shows and also performed in amateur contests with her sister. After finishing school in 1903, Sophie eloped with Louis Tuck, a local delivery driver, but the marriage did not last. Soon after giving birth, Sophie Tuck ran away to New York to become a professional entertainer, leaving her infant son in the care of her mother and younger sister.
In New York, Sophie Tuck became Sophie Tucker. One of her first jobs was at the 125th Street Theater, where her strong contralto voice made her a powerful “Coon Shouter,” a white performer who in the style of the day appeared as a blackfaced minstrel. Although Tucker asked to perform without blackface, she was told that she was “too big and ugly.” Yet, Tucker’s skill as a performer earned her increasingly higher-paying jobs on the vaudeville and burlesque circuits, along with a brief stint in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1909. When one day her costume and makeup were lost in transit, the opportunity for her to perform without blackface presented itself. The audience took to her warmly. As Tucker later wrote in her autobiography, “All the time I was singing five numbers, six, seven, then an eighth, inwardly I was exulting: ‘I don’t need blackface… I’ll never black up again.’”
Sophie Tucker soon became known for both her husky voice and her outspoken comedy. When she first heard her own recorded voice she exclaimed, “My God, I sound like a foghorn!” But the public loved Tucker’s sound and she became a popular recording artist in an era when recordings were still made on cylinders. In 1911 she recorded her hit song Some of These Days for the Edison Company. Written by African-American composer Sheldon Brooks, the piece became her theme a decade later. By 1914 Sophie Tucker was a major star, touring in the U.S. and abroad. Elaborately costumed, she perfected a bawdy performance style that blended ragtime and jazz, Yiddish popular culture, and sentimental ballads.
Dozens of songs were written specifically for Tucker, especially by her long-time collaborator and lyricist Jack Yellen. Tucker’s My Yiddische Momme (“My Jewish Mother”), penned by Yellen and composer Lew Pollack in 1925, stirred such emotion and pride among European Jews that the Nazis eventually forbade the sale of its recordings. In 1959, still going strong, Tucker was able to visit and perform in the Jewish state of Israel.
Throughout her life Sophie Tucker was known to be very generous. She bought lavishly for herself, her family, and friends—her parents, for example, were able to give up their restaurant early in her career. Although more of a cultural than a religiously observant Jew, Tucker espoused the practice of tzedakah (charity), the duty of a Jew to establish justice through compassion. Through benefit concerts she raised money for servicemen during World War I, and years later donated to charity all the proceeds from her fiftieth-anniversary record album and her autobiography. She was also a good business-woman and invested her earnings soundly—in real estate and industry.
Sophie Tucker, “The Last of the Red-Hot Mamas” as she called herself (based on another song by Yellen and composer Milton Ager), continued to perform on stage and radio, in movies, on recordings, and later on television into her eightieth year. She married and divorced three times and counted her friends in the thousands. Tucker died on February 9, 1966, having lived through several major eras of the entertainment business. Her 1911 recording of Some of These Days was added to the National Recording Registry in 2004. The legacy of Sophie Tucker’s frank and brassy style continues to emerge in the work of later generations, such as the contemporary women performers Bette Midler and Roseanne Barr.
The following is republished with permission from the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail. It was written by Helaine Davis.
One of four children, Sophie was born Sonya Kalish in Russia while her mother and elder brother were en route to the United States. Her father was already living on Salem Street in Boston’s North End as “Charles Abuza.” Earlier he had served as a Russian soldier but planned to desert the army and immigrate to the United States. An Italian soldier whom he had befriended on his way became sick and died while they were on the run. He took the soldier’s papers, name, and his identity—then left the country for the U.S. Sophie lived with her family in Boston for her first eight years of life and attended the Charlotte Cushman School on Parmenter Street in the North End.
When they moved to Hartford, Connecticut, Sophie’s parents opened Abuza’s Home Restaurant overlooking the Connecticut River. They served old-world Eastern European food to many Yiddish theater and vaudeville performers stopping over in Hartford. Sophie would listen to them talk about their travels, sang to entertain them and also would sing outside the restaurant to attract customers.
She married Louis Tuck—her first of three marriages—after she graduated from high school at just 16 years old. Together they had a son, but she dreamed of becoming a professional entertainer. When their marriage ended, Sophie was encouraged to pursue show business by entertainers who regularly dined at the restaurant and had heard her sing. She left her son behind in Hartford to be raised by her sister and mother and headed for New York City.
At an early audition for Chris Brown’s Amateur Nights at the 125th Street Theater, she swapped her married name for the stage name “Tucker.” That performance marked the official beginning of her career. During her early days, she was only given work if she agreed to sing in “blackface” a route also taken by Eddie Cantor and Al Jolson, among others, in the early 1900s before they became known. Sophie went on to perform with the Park vaudeville circuit, in towns across New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio. At a pivotal point in her career, while scheduled to perform back in Boston at the Old Howard Theatre, her make-up kit was lost. She went on stage as herself without the usual make-up and was a huge success—she never performed in blackface again.
Sophie was also a pioneer recording artist and recorded “Some of These Days” for the Edison Company in 1911. (Some of those Edison recordings are still available on You Tube). Songwriters Jack Yellen and Lou Pollack wrote: “My Yiddishe Mama” for Sophie in 1925. She initially performed it at the Palace Theatre in New York and later across the United States—especially when she knew that there would be a large Jewish audience. It surprised her that many people whether Jewish or not, loved the song even if they could not understand the Yiddish words. People were able to feel her emotion in the music and its universal theme. She was asked to perform the song in Berlin by the Berlin Broadcasting Company in 1931—but after Hitler came into power in 1933, her records were destroyed and the sale of “My Yiddishe Mama” was banned.
From the beginning of her career, she chose each song that she performed very carefully and often opted for those songs written by emerging Jewish and black artists from Tin Pan Alley including a young Irving Berlin. She wrote in her autobiography that having selected her own songs, instead of just performing the popular tunes of the day, made her act unique and helped her to create her own persona. Lighthearted humor and banter with the audience was also an integral part of her act—often her jokes were bawdy and, at times, self-deprecating. Always generous and considerate of everyone from the stage hands to other entertainers, she was well loved throughout her entire career and inspired many other women performers who followed, including Joan Rivers and Bette Midler.
Sophie was also known for her generosity. As soon as she was earning money professionally, she sent weekly checks to her parents in order to support her son and make life easier for her family. When she traveled, Sophie often stayed in rooming houses and would befriend, and give money to, many young women who were working as prostitutes. Shortly after World War II she established the Sophie Tucker Foundation and extended her philanthropy by donating time, as well as resources, to hospitals, Brandeis University, and Israel. Sophie served as president of the American Federation of Actors, and also contributed to several Theatrical Guilds and the Motion Picture Relief Fund.
Sophie Tucker is frequently quoted as stating the following witticism: “From birth to age 18, a girl needs good parents, from 18 to 35 she needs good looks, from 35 to 55 she needs a good personality, and from 55 on she needs cash.”