“‘What’s Your Mama’s Name”
Tanya Tucker
Written by Dallas Frazier and Earl Montgomery
Billboard
#1 (1 week)
May 19, 1973
Following up a debut album with hits like “Delta Dawn” and “The Jamestown Ferry” is a tall order, even if you’re not a new artist in your early teens.
Tanya Tucker deftly avoided the sophomore slump with a pair of Southern Gothic hits that topped the charts from her second album.
“What’s Your Mama’s Name” served as the title track and lead single, and it tells the haunting tale of a lonely man spending his entire adulthood trying to hunt down an old lover and the daughter that their illicit affair produced.
By the end of the song, his sanity is hovering around the same level as Miss Delta Dawn, but he’s got nobody around to call him baby. Just police officers who intervene as he approaches one girl after another, hoping he’s found his long lost child.
That this is the brighter story of this album’s two hits boggles the mind.
“What’s Your Mama’s Name” gets an A.
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I’m frequently caught off guard when I’m reminded just how young Tanya was when she recorded her most iconic hits. The fact that she’s the same age as Alan Jackson seems crazy when her debut came almost 20 years earlier.
I think that’s why country radio let her continue being successful well into the 90s while cutting off other 70s veterans and even 80s stars like Dan Seals. She was the same age as her contemporaries and actually fit in well.
Tammy Wynette also recorded a version of “What’s Your Mama’s Name” but it would not be released for a couple decades. Here’s that:
https://youtu.be/wcdxfeM_41c
Wynette’s husband also recorded a version:
https://youtu.be/krnA2cTPEVE