Sunday, January 13, 2008

Bette Midler Channels Sophie Tucker



From day one a sizable (not to mention crowd-pleasing) portion of Bette Midler's act has been the telling of "Soph" jokes - that is to say, jokes that were told by Sophie Tucker on adult-oriented "party albums" she recorded in the 1950s and derived from her performances in burlesque.

This is where I first heard of Sophie Tucker, and I'll be forever grateful to Bette Midler for that (among many, many other things); the above clip is, of course, derived from the film of the Divine Miss M's 1980 concert Divine Madness.
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