[Dixielandjazz] "Sophie Tucker: The Last of the Red Hot Mamas" previewed

[Robert Ringwald]

"Sophie Tucker: The Last of the Red Hot Mamas" previewed

'Red Hot Mamas' a 'Revuesical' About Big-Voiced Sophie Tucker
by Judith Newmark
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 5, 2010

Sophie Tucker's long show-biz career may be longer than anyone would guess.
Bette Miller adapted her stage persona, simultaneously naughty and warm.
The "Chicago" character Big Mama Morton was inspired by Tucker. The double entendre-packed
song "When You're Good to Mama" salutes her big voice and bawdy style.
Tony Parise even thinks that one of the numbers in "Hairspray," "Big, Blonde and
Beautiful," bears the stamp of Tucker's musical DNA, whether the writers were conscious
of that or not.
Forty-four years after her death, she's still "in the recesses" of our theatrical
culture, Parise says. But he's determined to bring her out of the shadows and back
into the spotlight that she loved.
Parise and Karin Baker have written a show about Tucker, "The Last of the Red-Hot
Mamas," that is playing at the New Jewish Theatre. Not exactly a biography and not
exactly a revue, Parise calls it a "revuesical" -- a term, he says, that was coined
by Tucker's friend Irving Berlin.
"She appealed to men and women, to all audiences," said Parise, 50. "She was sexy
but self-effacing, generous and smart. She was a woman ahead of her time."
Parise is directing and choreographing the NJT production. He's done both jobs many
times at theaters around the country, including a number of shows at the Muny. Today,
he divides his time between his apartment in Chelsea and his flat near Tower Grove
Park, not far from where he grew up. As a teenager, he studied dance with Stanley
Herbert, founder of the Civic Ballet. As soon as he graduated from Southwest High
School, he headed to the New York City Ballet, where he studied with the great George
Balanchine.
He hated it.
"It was amazing, but where was the joy? It was so not fun," Parise said. "I started
auditioning for Broadway shows instead. By 19, I was out on the road with 'A Chorus
Line.'"
He and Baker met about 30 years ago in Gower Champion's big production of "42nd Street."
Friends ever since, they decided they were meant to create a Sophie Tucker show when,
in the space of a couple of days, he listened to an old Tucker recording he'd forgotten
he even owned, and she stumbled upon Tucker's memoir while she was cleaning her apartment.
As they researched her life, they discovered a story bursting with drama as, indeed,
it may have been. When it came to her biography, Tucker cultivated a relaxed relationship
with the truth. Parise and Baker also discovered more and more of her material.
Today, Tucker is best remembered for her signature songs: the torchy "Some of These
Days" and the weepy "My Yiddishe Momme."
But in the course of a career that lasted about 60 years, most of it at the top,
Tucker sang a lot of material, from the minstrel "shouts" she performed early in
her career to the hot jazz numbers that were all the rage in the 1920s to the pop
numbers she performed in her many movie musicals.
With so much to choose from, Parise and Baker didn't need to write new songs for
"The Last of the Red Hot Mamas." Casting three actresses to portray Tucker at different
stages of her life, they stuck to authentic period material.
"We never had to force it," Parise marveled. "The right songs were there for every
moment. And they still sound right today."


--Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
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