All Tuckered Out

Though this something that stands on it's own, I'm mainly posting it now to set up what I have for tomorrow, which is helped by some background.

There are still plenty of people who know of Sophie Tucker, but plenty more who don't.  She was known as "Last of the Red Hot Mamas," and her career last for almost 60 years.  She made her first stage appearance in 1907, and the video below is her on The Ed Sullivan Show (on which she appeared often) in December, 1964.  Her signature song was “Some of These Days” that she first sang in 1910.  Yes, that's 1910.

She was quite a brassy character.  And came from very clearly a different era.  Not just different for her as a performer, but different for being in an era where someone like Sophie Tucker could have a career for almost 60 years.  And keep in mind to put this in even more perspective, The Beatles appeared on that same Ed Sullivan stage almost a year earlier!

Here she is in the aforementioned Sullivan video, singing a medley of probably her two biggest songs -- "Toot Toot Tootsie" and "Some of These Days" -- in an odd sort of sketch that seems to resurrect her days back in Prohibition

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLlV3g1qB8Y

As a bonus, here is film of her onstage in London in 1930, singing “No One But the Right Man Can Do Me Wrong”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJWBbRxpb5E

Oh, okay, let's toss in one more bonus, it's too special not to include here.  This time, she is back on The Ed Sullivan Show in October, 1965 -- in color.  And she sings another medley, this time beginning with a reminiscence of when George M. Cohan played "Give My Regards to Broadway" (I mean, seriously, talk about name-dropping, how do you top that?!), then a Maurice Chevalier classic (after talking about meeting him 45 years earlier...) and ending with, of course -- "Some of These Days."  Hey, I told you it was her signature number.  

The sound is a bit muffled, which is why I didn't want to post this first (it seems like it was recorded with a video camera off the TV) -- but it's good enough, and too notable a video to pass up.  Almost two years after The Beatles were on The Ed Sullivan Show.