Sophie Tucker

Tucker began her vaudeville career around 1906 performing in blackface, a common practice in minstrel and vaudeville traditions at the time. Her managers reportedly told her that audiences would not accept a large Jewish woman on stage without the mask, but she abandoned blackface as soon as she had enough name recognition to perform as herself.

Her most famous song was "Some of These Days," written by Shelton Brooks, which she first recorded in 1911 and performed throughout her career for over five decades. Brooks, a Black Canadian songwriter, also wrote "The Darktown Strutters' Ball" and became a close friend and contributor to Tucker's act.

Tucker was billed as "The Last of the Red Hot Mamas" throughout much of her career, a persona built around brash, bawdy confidence and sexually frank humor. She embraced the character so fully that it became inseparable from her name across vaudeville, Broadway, radio, and Las Vegas nightclub performances.

Her career spanned roughly sixty years, from her start in vaudeville around 1906 until her death in 1966. She was still performing in Las Vegas nightclubs in her final years, making her one of the few vaudeville-era stars to remain continuously active into the television age.