the1920sand30s | Sophie Tucker - Some Of These Days (1926) @the1920sand30s | Uploaded August 2021 | Updated October 2024, 15 hours ago.
Performed by: Sophie Tucker With Ted Lewis & His Band
Full Song: Some Of These Days
Recorded in: 1926
Flip side of: youtu.be/fDGskUjcmJo
Sophie Tucker (born Jan. 13, 1886 – died Feb. 9, 1966) was a Russian-born American singer, comedian, actress, & radio personality. Known for her powerful delivery of comical & risqué songs, she was one of the most popular entertainers in the U.S. during the first half of the 1920's. She was known by the nickname "The Last of the Red Hot Mamas".
Tucker was born Sofiya "Sonya" Kalish in 1886 to a Jewish family in Tulchyn, Russian Empire. They arrived in Boston on September 26, 1887. The family adopted the surname Abuza before immigrating, her father fearing repercussions for having deserted the Russian military. The family lived in Boston's North End for eight years, then settled in Hartford, Connecticut & opened a restaurant.
At a young age, she began singing at her parents' restaurant for tips. Between taking orders & serving customers, Tucker recalled that she "would stand up in the narrow space by the door & sing with all the drama I could put into it. At the end of the last chorus, between me & the onions, there wasn't a dry eye in the place."
In 1903, around the age of 17, Tucker eloped with Louis Tuck, a beer cart driver, from whom she later derived her professional surname. When she returned home, her parents arranged an Orthodox wedding for the couple. In 1905, she gave birth to a son, Albert. However, shortly after Albert was born, the couple separated, & Tucker left the baby with her family to move to New York City.
After she left her husband, Willie Howard gave Tucker a letter of recommendation to Harold Von Tilzer, a composer & theatrical producer in New York. When it failed to bring her work, Tucker found jobs in cafés & beer gardens, singing for food & tips from the customers. She sent most of what she made back home to Connecticut to support her son & family.
In 1907, Tucker made her first theater appearance, singing at an amateur night in a vaudeville establishment. The producers thought that the crowd would tease her for being "so big & ugly." Tucker also began integrating "fat girl" humor, which became a common thread in her acts. Her songs included "I Don't Want to Get Thin" & "Nobody Loves a Fat Girl, But Oh How a Fat Girl Can Love."
In 1909, Tucker performed with the Ziegfeld Follies. Though she was a hit, the other female stars refused to share the spotlight with her, & the company was forced to let her go. This caught the attention of William Morris, a theater owner & future founder of the William Morris Agency. Two years later, Tucker released "Some of These Days" on Edison Records, written by Shelton Brooks. The title of the song was used as the title of Tucker's 1945 biography.
In 1921, Tucker hired pianist & songwriter Ted Shapiro as her accompanist & musical director, a position he would keep throughout her career. Besides writing a number of songs for her, Shapiro became part of her stage act, playing piano on stage while she sang, & exchanging banter & wisecracks with her in between numbers. Tucker remained a popular singer through the 1920s & became friends with stars such as Mamie Smith & Ethel Waters, who introduced her to jazz. Tucker learned from these women & became one of the early performers to introduce jazz to white vaudeville audiences.
In 1925, Jack Yellen wrote "My Yiddishe Momme", a song which became strongly identified with her & was performed in cities which had a significant Jewish audience. Tucker said "Even though I loved the song, & it was a sensational hit every time I sang it. I was always careful to use it only when I knew the majority of the house would understand Yiddish. However, you didn't have to be a Jew to be moved by 'My Yiddishe Momme'." The song was banned in Nazi Germany.
By the 1920s, Tucker's success had spread to Europe, & she began a tour of England, performing for King George V & Queen Mary at the London Palladium in 1926. Tucker re-released her hit song "Some of These Days", backed by Ted Lewis & his band, which stayed at the number 1 position of the charts for five weeks beginning November 23, 1926. It sold over one million copies & was awarded a gold disc by the RIAA.
In the early 1930s, when vaudeville was beginning to seem passé, Tucker turned to nightclubs, while many of her fellow vaudevillians either attempted the movies or slid into oblivion. She made several films, but she preferred live audiences, & she played to them with great success for more than 30 years.
Tucker died of lung cancer & kidney failure on Feb. 9, 1966, aged 80, in her Park Avenue apartment.
I hope you enjoy this as much as I have.
Best wishes,
Stu
______________________
Please Note: I do not claim copyright or ownership of the song played in this video. All copyrighted content remains property of their respective owners.
Performed by: Sophie Tucker With Ted Lewis & His Band
Full Song: Some Of These Days
Recorded in: 1926
Flip side of: youtu.be/fDGskUjcmJo
Sophie Tucker (born Jan. 13, 1886 – died Feb. 9, 1966) was a Russian-born American singer, comedian, actress, & radio personality. Known for her powerful delivery of comical & risqué songs, she was one of the most popular entertainers in the U.S. during the first half of the 1920's. She was known by the nickname "The Last of the Red Hot Mamas".
Tucker was born Sofiya "Sonya" Kalish in 1886 to a Jewish family in Tulchyn, Russian Empire. They arrived in Boston on September 26, 1887. The family adopted the surname Abuza before immigrating, her father fearing repercussions for having deserted the Russian military. The family lived in Boston's North End for eight years, then settled in Hartford, Connecticut & opened a restaurant.
At a young age, she began singing at her parents' restaurant for tips. Between taking orders & serving customers, Tucker recalled that she "would stand up in the narrow space by the door & sing with all the drama I could put into it. At the end of the last chorus, between me & the onions, there wasn't a dry eye in the place."
In 1903, around the age of 17, Tucker eloped with Louis Tuck, a beer cart driver, from whom she later derived her professional surname. When she returned home, her parents arranged an Orthodox wedding for the couple. In 1905, she gave birth to a son, Albert. However, shortly after Albert was born, the couple separated, & Tucker left the baby with her family to move to New York City.
After she left her husband, Willie Howard gave Tucker a letter of recommendation to Harold Von Tilzer, a composer & theatrical producer in New York. When it failed to bring her work, Tucker found jobs in cafés & beer gardens, singing for food & tips from the customers. She sent most of what she made back home to Connecticut to support her son & family.
In 1907, Tucker made her first theater appearance, singing at an amateur night in a vaudeville establishment. The producers thought that the crowd would tease her for being "so big & ugly." Tucker also began integrating "fat girl" humor, which became a common thread in her acts. Her songs included "I Don't Want to Get Thin" & "Nobody Loves a Fat Girl, But Oh How a Fat Girl Can Love."
In 1909, Tucker performed with the Ziegfeld Follies. Though she was a hit, the other female stars refused to share the spotlight with her, & the company was forced to let her go. This caught the attention of William Morris, a theater owner & future founder of the William Morris Agency. Two years later, Tucker released "Some of These Days" on Edison Records, written by Shelton Brooks. The title of the song was used as the title of Tucker's 1945 biography.
In 1921, Tucker hired pianist & songwriter Ted Shapiro as her accompanist & musical director, a position he would keep throughout her career. Besides writing a number of songs for her, Shapiro became part of her stage act, playing piano on stage while she sang, & exchanging banter & wisecracks with her in between numbers. Tucker remained a popular singer through the 1920s & became friends with stars such as Mamie Smith & Ethel Waters, who introduced her to jazz. Tucker learned from these women & became one of the early performers to introduce jazz to white vaudeville audiences.
In 1925, Jack Yellen wrote "My Yiddishe Momme", a song which became strongly identified with her & was performed in cities which had a significant Jewish audience. Tucker said "Even though I loved the song, & it was a sensational hit every time I sang it. I was always careful to use it only when I knew the majority of the house would understand Yiddish. However, you didn't have to be a Jew to be moved by 'My Yiddishe Momme'." The song was banned in Nazi Germany.
By the 1920s, Tucker's success had spread to Europe, & she began a tour of England, performing for King George V & Queen Mary at the London Palladium in 1926. Tucker re-released her hit song "Some of These Days", backed by Ted Lewis & his band, which stayed at the number 1 position of the charts for five weeks beginning November 23, 1926. It sold over one million copies & was awarded a gold disc by the RIAA.
In the early 1930s, when vaudeville was beginning to seem passé, Tucker turned to nightclubs, while many of her fellow vaudevillians either attempted the movies or slid into oblivion. She made several films, but she preferred live audiences, & she played to them with great success for more than 30 years.
Tucker died of lung cancer & kidney failure on Feb. 9, 1966, aged 80, in her Park Avenue apartment.
I hope you enjoy this as much as I have.
Best wishes,
Stu
______________________
Please Note: I do not claim copyright or ownership of the song played in this video. All copyrighted content remains property of their respective owners.
![Jean Sablon - Vous qui passez sans me voir [You who go without me] (1936)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/YpynbMU8boE/hqdefault.jpg "Jean Sablon - Vous qui passez sans me voir [You who go without me] (1936)
Performed by: Jean Sablon
Full Song Title: Vous qui passez sans me voir
Recorded in: 1936
Jean Sablon (Nogent-sur-Marne, 25 March 1906 - Cannes, 24 February 1994) was a popular French singer and actor of the 1930s.
The son of a composer, with brothers and sisters who had successful careers of their own in musical entertainment, Jean Sablon studied piano at the Lycée Charlemagne in Paris. He left before graduating to enroll at the Paris Conservatoire in order to concentrate on a vocal career. He started in the cabarets of Paris at the age of 17, and was subsequently accompanied on his first album by the pianist/composer Mireille, whose song Couchés dans le foin became a great success. Later, he partnered the wildly popular Mistinguett at the Casino de Paris and boosted his career considerably. He was the first cabaret singer to use a microphone in his stage act. In the 1920s he spent time in Brazil where his recordings remain extremely popular today.
In 1937, he won the Grand Prix du Disque for the song Vous qui passez sans me voir, written for him by Charles Trenet and Johnny Hess. That same year, he went to the United States, where he sang on live radio broadcasts for CBS and made several records in the English language. On Broadway, he worked with luminaries such as Cole Porter and George Gershwin. He returned to Paris but, with the German occupation of France in World War II, he went back to America for the duration.
March 30, 1950, Jean Sablon records Cest si bon in London. June 26, 1950, Louis Armstrong recorded the American version of the song in New York City with Sy Oliver and his Orchestra and English lyrics of Jerry Seelen. The song became a worldwide hit.
Jean Sablon became one of the most widely acclaimed male French singers, considered second only in overall lifetime popularity to Maurice Chevalier. His records sold in the millions around the world and he is frequently referred to as the French equivalent of Americas Bing Crosby. During his career, he recorded with some of the worlds top musicians, including Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli. Sablon is credited with arranging Reinhardts debut in a fashionable cabaret in 1933. He is also recognized for his talents as a lyricist and a composer. Sablon appeared in a number of motion pictures and television films performing as a vocalist or pianist, his last being in 1984 when he sang April in Paris in Mistrals Daughter, the popular American TV miniseries filmed in France.
Jean Sablon died in Cannes in 1994 and was buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris.
I hope you enjoy this as much as I have.
Best wishes,
Stu
Please Note: I do not claim copyright or ownership of the song played in this video. All copyrighted content remains property of their respective owners")
![Comedian Harmonists - Eine Kleine Frühlingsweise [A little spring tune] (1933)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/_LYih8zPlVw/hqdefault.jpg "Comedian Harmonists - Eine Kleine Frühlingsweise [A little spring tune] (1933)
Performed by: Comedian Harmonists
Full Song Title: Eine Kleine Frühlingsweise
Recorded in: 1933
This song is dedicated to my mother-in-law. Its her favorite childhood song. I hope this brings back some happy memories.
The Comedian Harmonists were an internationally famous, all-male German close harmony ensemble that performed between 1928 and 1934 as one of the most successful musical groups in Europe before World War II. The group consisted of Harry Frommermann (tenor buffo), Asparuh Ari Leschnikoff (first tenor), Erich Collin (second tenor), Roman Cycowski (baritone), Robert Biberti (bass), and Erwin Bootz (pianist).
The hallmark of the Comedian Harmonists was its members ability to blend their voices together so that the individual singers could appear and disappear back into the vocal texture. Its repertoire was wide, ranging from the folk and classical songs arranged by Frommermann to appealing and witty popular songs of the day by writers such as Peter Igelhoff, Werner Richard Heymann and Paul Abraham.
In 1927, unemployed actor Harry Frommermann was inspired by The Revelers, a jazz-influenced popular vocal group from the United States, to create a German group of the same format. According to Douglas Friedmans 2010 book The Comedian Harrmonists in August 1929 both groups appeared on the same bill at the Scala in Berlin and became good friends. Frommermann held auditions in his apartment on Stubenrauchstraße 47 in Berlin-Friedenau, and, once the group was assembled, it quickly began rehearsals. After some initial failures, the Harmonists soon found success, becoming popular throughout Europe, visiting the United States, and appearing in 21 films.
The groups success continued into the early 1930s, but eventually ran into trouble with the Nazi regime: three of the group members - Frommermann, Collin, and Cycowski - were either Jewish or of Jewish descent, and Bootz had married a Jewish woman. The Nazis progressively made the groups professional life more difficult, initially banning pieces by Jewish composers, and finally prohibiting them from performing in public. The groups last concert in Germany was in Hannover on March 25, 1934 after which they sailed to America on the SS Europa and gave several concerts. Fearing internment if they stayed abroad, however, they eventually returned home amid bitter internal disputes.
Frommermann, Cycowski, and Collin subsequently fled Germany and formed a new group, which performed under the names Comedian Harmonists and Comedy Harmonists with a new pianist, bass, and high tenor. The remaining members in Germany likewise replaced their counterparts in a successor group named Das Meistersextett (as the authorities forbade an English-language name).
Neither group was able to achieve the original success of the Comedian Harmonists, with the German group stifled by political in-fighting and heavy censorship, as well as the war draft (call-up); the emigrant group was unable to find work in America due to hostility to German entertainers, and they were unable to return to Australia, where they had enjoyed extensive success in the 1930s. The Bulgarian Asparuh Leschnikoff /Leshnikov/ returned to his fatherland in 1938 and started a successful career. By 1941, both groups had broken up. Although all members survived the war, they never re-formed after the war.
The group remained largely forgotten until filmmaker Eberhard Fechner created a four-hour black-and-white television documentary, in which he interviewed the surviving members in 1975, who were scattered throughout the world. The documentary aired over two nights in German in 1977 and caused a resurgence of interest in the music of the Comedian Harmonists, with their records being released on vinyl.
They won recognition from the musical entertainment industry in 1998 when they won the Echo Prize from the Deutsche Phonoakademie.
I hope you enjoy this as much as I have.
Best wishes,
Stu
Please Note: I do not claim copyright or ownership of the song played in this video. All copyrighted content remains property of their respective owners.")
![Pyotr Leshchenko - Vino Lyubvi [Вино любви/The Wine of Love] (1933)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/_Rwwjx9Mz2k/hqdefault.jpg "Pyotr Leshchenko - Vino Lyubvi [Вино любви/The Wine of Love] (1933)
Performed by: Оркестр Фрaнкa Фоксa [Frank Fox & His Dance Orchestra]
Vocals: Пётр Лещенко [Pyotr Leshchenko]
Full Song Title: Вино любви [The Wine of Love]
Recorded in: Vienna, Austria 1933
Flip side of: https://youtu.be/G8ACEybyDYg
Pyotr Leshchenko (born 2 June 1898 – died 16 July 1954), was a popular singer in the Russian Empire, Romania and later the Soviet Union, is universally considered the King of Russian Tango and specifically known for his rendition of Serdtse a tango, sung unusually not in Spanish but in Russian.
He was born as an illegitimate child of the Russian Empire in Isayevo village of the Kherson Governorate into a poor and illiterate Ukrainian peasant family. During the First World War, his mother and stepfather moved to Chișinău, which was later united with Romania. He was drafted into the Russian army, and attended an officers college in Kiev. After graduating he was sent to the front, and was wounded soon thereafter, recuperating at a military hospital in Chișinău. He was proficient in numerous languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Romanian, German, and others. In his early childhood, he sang in a church choir and learned how to play the 7-string guitar.
After the war, Pyotr, who had never learned a real trade, worked at various restaurants, serving, dish-washing and performing small theatrical acts. He had a soft baritone voice.
After taking some ballet lessons in Paris, he started performing with his Latvian wife Zinaida Zakit, a dancer. Their act was a mixture of ballet, folklore dance and European tango, which was so popular it led to tours to Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Germany, and Great Britain. It was at Riga, when he improvised gypsy music and tango singing to make up for the absence of his pregnant wife, that he discovered he could sing in front of an audience. In 1935, he was at the peak of his success. Though he still included old Russian romances, and even Soviet songs (like Serdtse, which was originally sung by Leonid Utyosov) in his repertoire, songs were now composed for him exclusively (with the tango songs turning Argentine in style and arrangement). One of his favourite non-Russian composers was Jerzy Petersburski, but he also sang work composed by Pavel German, Konstantin Podrevsky and Isaak Dunayevsky. Composers who composed certain songs specifically for him included Oscar Strok, Mark Maryanovsky and Yefim Sklyarov. Many lyrics of Leshchenko songs were written by Boris Fomin.
Leshchenko performed for European nobles and White (anti-Bolshevik) Russian émigrés at his own Leschenko cabaret in Bucharest (dubbed the Eastern Maxims). The first part of every performance would typically be dedicated to gipsy music, but during the second part Leshchenko would dress up in a tuxedo, with a white silk handkerchief and sing and dance Argentine tango.
In the Soviet Union his work was banned both because he was believed to be a White émigré (which he was not legally) and because the style (tango and foxtrot) was deemed counter-revolutionary. Nevertheless, secretly he was very popular: people would even listen to Radio Tehran to hear his music, 78 records were smuggled into the country from the Baltics, and specialists would bootleg his music onto ribs (used X-ray plates). When during the Second World War and the subsequent occupation of Odessa by the Romanian army, Leshchenko was finally able to perform in the country he still considered his own, people would queue for hours on end to buy a ticket to one of his Odessa concerts. It was at Odessa that Pyotr met his second wife, Vera Georgievna Belousova, for whom he would later, back in Romania, divorce Zinaida.
After Romania switched sides in August 1944 and the Soviet army entered Romania, Leshchenko was not arrested, and became the protégé of general Vladimir Ivanovich Burenin, military commander of the Red Army garrison in Bucharest.
In 1951, a week after receiving an official letter granting them permission to settle in the Soviet Union, Vera and Pyotr were arrested by the Romanian police. Vera was extradited to the Soviet Union, where she was condemned to forced labour for amongst other things, marrying a foreigner. Pyotr was detained in a prison near Bucharest, and then was sent to a forced labor camp at the Danube–Black Sea Canal. Both outlived Joseph Stalin, but Pyotr died in a prison hospital in Târgu Ocna on 16 July 1954, without Vera at his side (she had already been released but did not know her husband was still alive). Some friends present when he died claimed his last words were Friends, I am happy, for I will return to my fatherland! I am going away, but I leave you my heart. Vera died on December 18, 2009, age 86.
I hope you enjoy this as much as I have.
Best wishes,
Stu
Please Note: I do not claim copyright or ownership of the song played in this video. All copyrighted content remains property of their respective owners.")
![Eugen Jose Wolff - There, where you are going [Dort, wo du hingehst] (1936)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/a1Eo1y7kItY/hqdefault.jpg "Eugen Jose Wolff - There, where you are going [Dort, wo du hingehst] (1936)
Performed by: Eugen Jose Wolff
Full Song Title: Dort, wo du hingehst
Recorded in: 1936
Eugen José Wolff (born February 19, 1901 in Hamm / Westphalia ; died November 7, 1961 in Berlin ) was a German violinist and swing and dance music orchestra conductor in the 1930s and early 1940s .
Wolff studied violin in Bochum and Antwerp. He gave his first concerts at the age of eleven. In the mid-twenties, Eugen Wolff performed with his own small dance band in the Hotel Astoria (Leipzig), in Munich and in the Faun in Hamburg. At the end of the 1920s he renamed himself in the wake of the rumba wave and temporarily appeared as José Wolff. From autumn 1929 he received his first engagements in Berlin (Haus Imperator). At the beginning of 1930 he called his orchestra Jazz-Solisten-Kapelle and performed with them in Hamburg. By the end of 1930 he joined a big band orchestra and performed with his 12 jazz cannons in Denmark, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Austria.
Wolff returned to his dance orchestra in 1934/35 at Berlins Eden Hotel. In 1937 the Hotel Esplanade becomes the permanent venue for his dance orchestra. From 1936 Wolff recorded a number of shellac records with a studio ensemble for Odeon , mostly popular hits and film melodies such as Dort, wo du hingehst (from the film Allotria 1936), Es leuchten die Sterne (from the film with the same name), Kautschuk / Caramba (O-31423, from the Adventure film Kautschuk 1938), Donkey-Serenade (O-31384, from Tarantella , 1937) and Stern von Rio (O-31613, from the film with the same name 1940) etc.
In Wolffs orchestra played Willy Berking , Detlev Lais and Lubo DOrio ; Vocalists were Ralph Maria Siegel (Es leuchten die Sterne), Fred Kassen and the Metropol vocalists (Warum hat die Adelheid keinen Abend für mich Zeit, 1939) and Greta Schönfelder / Gustav Ludzey (Gute Nacht kleines Mädel, 1943) and Doddy Delissen (Yes Sir, Odeon O-31220). He had 18 jazz recording sessions between 1936 and 1939, according to Tom Lord . From 1940 Eugen Wolff was called to support and entertain front line troops. In 1942, while working to support the Wehrmacht, he met his wife, the singer Marlene Mathan. Their only recording session took place at the end of 1942. Wolffs last recordings were made in 1943.
In 1943 Wolff was drafted as a soldier; At the end of the war he was taken prisoner by the Soviets. When he returned to Berlin in 1949, he founded a new orchestra. The first post-war recordings for Odeon took place in October 1949. After negotiations about further recordings were unsuccessful, Wolff and his wife withdrew from the music business in 1954.
I hope you enjoy this as much as I have.
Best wishes,
Stu
Please Note: I do not claim copyright or ownership of the song played in this video. All copyrighted content remains property of their respective owners.")
