"What's Your Mama's Name" is a song written by
Dallas Frazier
Dallas Frazier (October 27, 1939 – January 14, 2022) was an American country musician and songwriter who had success in the 1950s and 1960s.
Life and career
Frazier was born in Spiro, Oklahoma, on October 27, 1939, but was raised in Bakersfie ...
and Earl Montgomery, and recorded by American
country music
Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, ...
artist
Tanya Tucker
Tanya Denise Tucker (born October 10, 1958) is an American country music singer and songwriter who had her first hit, "Delta Dawn", in 1972 at the age of 13. Over the succeeding decades, Tucker became one of the few child performers to mature int ...
. It was released in February 1973 as the first single and title track from the album ''
What's Your Mama's Name
''What's Your Mama's Name'' is the second studio album by American country music singer Tanya Tucker. It was released on May 21, 1973, by Columbia Records. The album was produced by Billy Sherrill and includes Tucker's first two number one country ...
''. The song was Tucker's fourth hit on the country chart and her first number one. The single stayed at number one for a single week and spent a total of fourteen weeks on the chart.
On the
''Billboard'' Hot 100 pop chart, it reached number eighty-six.
Tammy Wynette
Tammy Wynette (born Virginia Wynette Pugh; May 5, 1942 – April 6, 1998) was an American country music artist, as well as an actress and author. She is considered among the genre's most influential and successful artists. Along with Loretta Ly ...
also recorded an unreleased version of the song in the early 1970s. Her version was never officially released till after her death in 1998.
Content
The song tells, in flashback, of a man named Buford Wilson. The story begins at least 30 years beforehand, when the young man travels to
Memphis, Tennessee
Memphis is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the seat of Shelby County in the southwest part of the state; it is situated along the Mississippi River. With a population of 633,104 at the 2020 U.S. census, Memphis is the second-mos ...
, in search of a woman with whom he'd had a previous relationship in
. He spends the next decade asking people about the woman's whereabouts, and is generally ignored-now described not as a "young man," but as "a drunkard," he has an encounter with a young, green-eyed girl. As told in the song's refrain:
Wilson is arrested for enticing a child - after he had offered her a nickel's worth of candy if she revealed the identity of her mother - and is jailed for a month of labor. The final verse describes how, about a year before the present, Wilson, now a "
wayward soul" that
the county had to claim, is found dead in Memphis, wearing a ragged coat. Inside the coat's pocket is a "faded letter" stating, "You have a daughter, and her eyes are Wilson green," showing that Wilson's intent was not predatory, but to simply find his lost daughter and to reconnect with her mother, his lost love.
Chart performance
References
Songs about mothers
1973 singles
Tanya Tucker songs
Songs written by Dallas Frazier
Song recordings produced by Billy Sherrill
Songs about New Orleans
Columbia Records singles
Songs written by Earl Montgomery
1973 songs
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