October 18, 2009

Broadcast Date: 
Oct 18 2009

A two-hour special featuring interviews with scholars and critics plus cuts from sexy songstress Sophie Tucker's earliest recordings in the teens and '20s, newly recovered from the wax cylinders and released on Sophie Tucker: Origins of the Red Hot Mama (Archeophone).

Episode segments
  • Jody Rosen
    Music, Arts & Culture
    Jody Rosen is the music critic for the on-line magazine Slate.  He is the author of White Christmas: The Story of an American Song and the curator of Jewface, a compilation of Jewish minstrel songs from the early decades of the 20th century. He wrote about the newly released Sophie Tucker CD in The New York Times.
    Esther Kaplan and Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark

    Jody Rosen talks with us about  the many ways Sophie Tucker represented a radical break with the musical past, in her performance style, her vocal phrasing and use of dialect and vernacular, and in the ways she challenged received notions of femininity,

  • Lloyd Ecker
    Music, Arts & Culture
    Lloyd Ecker, with Susan Ecker, wrote the liner notes for Sophie Tucker: Origins of the Red Hot Mama: 1910-1922.  They are currently developing a documentary of her life (for further information, go to SophieTucker.com.
    Esther Kaplan and Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark

    Lloyd Ecker talks with us about the trajectory of Sophie Tucker's early life--from washing dishes in her father's kosher restaurant in Hartford CN to becoming the Queen of vaudville--and about what she was like on stage, her skill as a self-promoter and her identity as a Jew.

  • Richard Martin
    Music, Arts & Culture
    Richard Martin is the founder, owner and operator, with Meagan Hennessy, of Archeophone Records, the producer of Sophie Tucker: Origins of the Red Hot Mama 1910-1922.
    Esther Kaplan and Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark

    Richard Martin talks with us about the acoustic recording era and the process of locating and remastering the early Sophie Tucker recordings.  He also discusses the troubling world of blackface performance, where Sophie Tucker got her start.