"Wind Beneath My Wings" by Bette Midler

Like many seemingly quintessential New Yorkers, Bette Midler was a transplant; shortly after her arrival there from Hawai'i in 1965 she said she felt like she was home - despite missing her family in Honolulu, of course. The city, she says, gave her everything; she was already heavily engaged in giving back, through her charity New York Restoration Project (which she founded in 1995), when the city was attacked on this day in 2001.

Wind Beneath My Wings already had poignance when it was released in 1989, on the soundtrack to the movie Beaches; 12 days after the attacks she gave it even more by performing it live from Yankee Stadium during a televised memorial.
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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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My Favourite Photos of All Time

Back in the day, before they were legends, Tom Waits and Bette Midler share a laugh (no doubt over something raunchy).
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