Sophie Tucker Quotes

Showbiz works well when you give the audience what they want.

I'm out there every night working my butt off trying to do what I do, and that is entertain every single person that paid their hard earned money for a ticket. So I think people realize that and I think over time, I feel like that's grown, definitely.

After watching 'Peepshow,' people always say to me that it was more than what they expected. It is so much more than a musical. It has a lot of energy and is fast-paced. You are entertained the whole time watching it. One guy from Germany watched 'Peepshow' every single day for the whole week he was in Vegas.

What was important to me was entertaining the audience, and whether that meant winning, losing, singing, or whatever it was on the live show we were doing every week, which was awesome, I was game for it.

I've always been one for show business. I like performing, and I used to get criticized for having production value. But now it's all that! People need to get what they pay for! Otherwise, just listen to recorded music.

I've learned a lot about putting a show up in Vegas. You can't just all of a sudden put up a show here and do well. Nobody does.

The bulk of my set is instrumental and you have to give yourself and the audience some relief because a performance is not about great guitar playing it's really about entertainment.

I'm not a jukebox; I don't play exactly what the crowd wants to hear - that doesn't make sense. But, I do look at people requests. At the end of the day, they are the ticket payers and they are the ones that come to the show. If I played music that purely entertains me, I'd play very weird music.

And the live show is still our main thing.

I could beat my mike stand into the stage, but I was still in pain. Maybe fans liked it, but sometimes people forget you're a person and they're more into the entertainment value. It's taken a long time to turn that around and give a strong show without it being a kamikaze show.

I don't know why people are so surprised by my live performances.

There were a great many in vaudeville - people who never quite came through. But they had their place, and they filled it. They kept theatres open. Those pan-timers, those interstate-timers, those four-a-dayers, those six-a-dayers - they were an integral part of that endearing merry-go-round called vaudeville.

KISS is Las Vegas entertainment. A musician doesn't need the mask.

I never called my work an 'art'. It's part of show business, the business of building entertainment.

I believe in the nobility of entertaining people and I take great, great pride that people are willing to give me two or three hours of their busy lives.

I grew up with music hall and revue and was used to filling in the little gaps here and there to get bigger audience reaction.

I've made a wonderful living playing that theatrical character - the professional brassy dame.

You either entertain an audience or you don't.

I'm an entertainer. If people are paying good money for tickets they deserve the best show they can see. I don't get into lighting stuff on fire, but I do believe in going the extra mile.

The great thing about stage is that you have a live audience.

If I live to be 90, and I'm planning to, I'll always love performing for a live audience.

I think the idea of doing a live audience taped show every week and just the rush of that would be a dream. I would love to do that.

No matter what part of the business you want to be in, live performances are the most thrilling.

Fans want more; they want you to perform in their living room. That's the nature of the beast.

The excitement does not change. After 40 years in the business, I still find the show to be a magical moment - the performance anxiety, the litmus test.