Sophie Tucker

Sophie Tucker, the “Coon Shouter” and “Last of the Red Hot Mamas,” hired African American singers to give her lessons and African American composers to write her songs.

A Renegade History of the United States

Historian Mark Slobin points to “the fact that virtually every Jewish American stage personality, from Weber and Fields through Al Jolson, Sophie Tucker, and Eddie Cantor, first reached out to American audiences from behind a mask of burnt cork.”

A Renegade History of the United States

Hence you have songs by a wide array of artists, with more known Jewish singers like Connie Francis, Sophie Tucker and Tom Jones mixed with Al Jolson and Chubby Checker.

Derek Beres: Global Beat Fusion: Buzzing Cicadas and Jewish Gangsters

Broadway stars, such as opera soprano Lilian Breton and vaudevillian Sophie Tucker, entertained the men at evening banquets.

Wild Bill Donovan

Hence you have songs by a wide array of artists, with more known Jewish singers like Connie Francis, Sophie Tucker and Tom Jones mixed with Al Jolson and Chubby Checker.

Derek Beres: Global Beat Fusion: Buzzing Cicadas and Jewish Gangsters

MR: They suggested Sophie Tucker, and Kathy Brier played the part.

Mike Ragogna: Boardwalk Empires, Mockingbirds, Concertos & Rocket Science: Conversations with The Jayhawks, Bela Fleck and Vince Giordano

Broadway stars, such as opera soprano Lilian Breton and vaudevillian Sophie Tucker, entertained the men at evening banquets.

Wild Bill Donovan

As in previous shows, she re-creates a Sophie Tucker routine, "Max From the Income Tax," which ostensibly is about economic chaos but reveals more about her fascination with Tucker, a Jewish tummler who for 60 years made herself the butt literally of her own jokes about being a zaftig farbissina.

Highlights and Dark Nights

Bette Midler, who made a debut at Carnegie in 1972, paid homage to Sophie Tucker by singing "My Yiddishe Momme," handkerchief in hand—"I never had the reason to sing this even though I've always wanted to," Ms. Midler said, "But maybe I just never had the nerve."—and then to Lotte Lenye with "Pirate Jenny."

Carnegie Hall's Big Birthday Bash

MR: They suggested Sophie Tucker, and Kathy Brier played the part.

Mike Ragogna: Boardwalk Empires, Mockingbirds, Concertos & Rocket Science: Conversations with The Jayhawks, Bela Fleck and Vince Giordano