What's Your Mama's Name? (1973)
Tanya Tucker: What's Your Mama's Name?
(Grand Ole Opry, 1973)
(Church Street Station, Orlando, FL, 1974)
(Disco, Germany, 1974)
(slide show)
Music: Dallas Frazier
Lyrics: Earl Montgomery
What's your mama's name, child?
What's your mama's name?Thirty some odd years ago a young man came to Memphis,
Asking 'bout a rose, that used to blossom in his world.
People never took the time to mind the young man's questions,
Until one day they heard him ask a little green-eyed girl:What's your mama's name, child?
What's your mama's name?
Does she ever talk about a place called New Orleans?
Has she ever mentioned a man named Buford Wilson?
What's your mama's name, child?
What's your mama's name?Twenty some odd years ago a drunkard down in Memphis
Lost a month of life and labor to the county jail,
Just because he asked a little green-eyed girl a question
And offered her a nickel's worth of candy, if she'd tell.A year and some odd days ago an old man died in Memphis.
Just another wayward soul, the county had to claim.
Inside the old man's ragged coat they found a faded letter.
It said: "You have a daughter and her eyes are Wilson green."What's your mama's name, child?
What's your mama's name?
Does she ever talk about a place called New Orleans?
Has she ever mentioned a man named Buford Wilson?
What's your mama's name, child?
What's your mama's name?What's your mama's name, child?
What's your mama's name?
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, in search of a woman with whom he'd had a previous relationship in New Orleans. 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.
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.