Mar 272012
What was up with that trend in the ’70s of calling your significant other “Mama”? I’m glad it has fallen out of favor because it always struck me as creepy, but I’d like to document just how widespread it was.
Please name a song in which the singer calls the object of their desire “Mama.” The person being called “Mama” cannot be the singer/narrator’s mother. The song does not have to be from the ’70s.
I’ll start with “Rock n Roll Mama,” by the Raspberries.
“Black Dog.” Hand over the fucking belt.
FYI, in my experience, Latina women really do habitually call their lovers “Papi” in bed. Make of that what you will.
Do I really have to think about that, Great One? 🙂
We might get 80 entries just from Zeppelin songs.
Up On Cripple Creek (“so I guess I’ll call up my big Mama and tell her I’ll be rolling in…”)
The Band, “Rag Mama Rag.”
“Mama, You’ve Been on My Mind,” Bob Dylan
Oh, Lord. This will go on for- f*cking- EVER. How many songs DON’T contain the word “mama”?
Steppenwolf, “Hey Lawdy Mama.”
You’re not at least excited for the inevitable spiteful battles over a few songs where it’s not clear whether the “mama” in question is the singer’s mother?
Before I try to come up with some rare examples of this phenomenon, a true story…
In high school and my first year or two of college I worked summers at a friend’s family’s baby clothing business. My friend, a fellow Townsman, and I had a great time working in the stockroom. The working guys we loaded and unloaded flats with – guys of varied races and ages but all at a lower economic level than us – were a lot of fun. I knew a lot of guys like this from my grandparents’ luncheonette in a nearby part of town. We talked sports, women, and all sorts of shit, as groups of sweaty workin’ guys are known to do. My friend and I, college-track goody two-shoes, were often the butt of jokes, but that was cool and to be expected. We were accepted by these men who did not get to go off to some comfy private school in September.
The factory in which we worked had an auxiliary warehouse in an even grittier part of Philadelphia. Every once in a while we had to go to the auxiliary warehouse in this really shitty location (a part of the city that hipsters today have begun inhabiting and fixing up as much as possible). The regulars at the auxiliary warehouse were of a lower socioeconomic class. Whereas the regulars we worked alongside followed the same sports we did (baseball, football, basketball) and in many cases had wives, serious girlfriends, and kids, the guys in the auxiliary warehouse were much harder to place. To put it bluntly and undelicately, they seemed like guys who were dragged out of a gutter for day labor. One time I was in the bathroom, washing my hands, when a sweaty little guy walked in, nodded my way, grabbed a can of Lysol, and sprayed it under his armpits. Working at the auxiliary warehouse was a drag. I remember complaining to my Mom those nights that I had nothing in common with those guys. “They don’t even like regular sports,” I told her, “They’re the kind of people who think professional wrestling is real!”
I try my hardest to be a friendly guy in any circumstance. I was working alongside one of these guys one day, a guy maybe only 5 years older than me (16 or 17, at the time), when he started asking me if I had an “old lady.” I know it’s hard to believe, as worldly as I am today, but I was really naive. “Sure,” I answered, thinking of my Mom. He proceeded to tell me things he did the previous night with his old lady that I was pretty sure not even a guy working at this warehouse day-to-day would do to his Mom. That was the day I learned the meaning of “old lady.” Had this guy been a rock ‘n roll singer he probably would have sung songs about a “Mama” who was not, in fact, his mother.
Testing one out: In “Sunny Afternoon” by The Kinks, is the mama of “Ah save me, save me, save me from this squeeze. I got a big fat mama tryin’ to break me…” a failed object of desire? His mother-in-law? The IRS? If it’s his mother-in-law, (a big fat mama, but not his big fat mama) as I’ve long figured, does that count?
Incidentally, when I was young, I thought this was the funniest line in any song ever because I imagined that he was literally being sat on by the mother-in-law mentioned earlier in the song.
The jazz-blues setting of the song tells me the singer is have relations of a sexual nature with this particular “fat mama.”
I always assumed that too. So Alexmagic is currently the last man standing, unless….
That shit is funny! Kudos!
Love Gun by KISS, containing the Robert Frost inspired line, “I’ll be a gambler, baby, lay down a bet, we’ll get together mama, you’ll sweat!”
funny and more than a little awkward
“Crazy Mama” – JJ Cale
“Take out your false teeth, mama, I wanna suck on your gums” – from the live “Whammer Jammer” by J. Geils Band.
My Mom once told me that if my dad ever called her “momma” or “mommy”, she would have divorced him.
Are you sure he’s addressing a woman or a harmonica?
“Mama,” ’80s-era Genesis’ ode to a prostitute. No comment.
Well, as long as he wasn’t referring to his own mother, right? I least I hope not. Gahh….
“Goose Step Mama” – The Rutles
Brutal. Reassure me that you understand when singers refer to their “baby” they are usually not talking about their offspring.
Cakewalk into Town by Taj Mahal “Throw your big leg over me mama, I might not feel this good again”
Crazy Mama by The Stones.
Pretty — Rick Derringer throw a few Lawdy Mama’s into Rock N Roll, Hoochie Koo, I recall he want said mama to “light his fuse.”
A clearly vexed Bob Dylan/Rod Stewart puts on a brave face by declaring “Mama You’ve Been On My Mind.”
Foreigner, “Hot Blooded,” as in “Are you hot, mama? You sure look that way to me” as Les Nessman dons his toupee and adjusts his ascot
aloha
LD
Joe Walsh – Help Me Through the Night. Help me through the night, mama, help me to ease the pain or something like that.
Oh, mama, can this really be the end? To be stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again?” LMS, and prepared to soldier on only with Dylan songs. He was a major mama’s boy.
“Red Hot Mama” – Funkadelic
Doesn’t that fail the “not the singer’s own mama” rule?
You couldn’t shut up, you had a bad bad brain Mamamamamama “Mama’s Boy” – The Ramones
Forget that one, I broke the rules.
Although Joey isn’t singing about HIS mother, I don’t think the Mama is an object of desire.
We need a ruling from on high here – can songs about someone else’s mama (mother) be included? There are quite a few eligible titles if so.
I would say not unless the singer is sleeping with someone else’s mother.
The Mod is correct, the “mama” must be the object of the singer’s desire.
There’s the John Cale song (from the Fear album ) Momomma Scuba, but I’m not going to vouch for what it’s really about.
Does Stacey’s Mom count?
That’s one of those songs that really works up an indescribably uncomfortable feeling, isn’t it?
Is she referred to as “Mama”? I think that’s just as important as the object of desire thing.
Carl Carlton, “She’s a Bad Mama Jama!” She’s built, she’s stacked!
aloha
LD
Correct again Mod. It’s the fact that the singer is calling the object of his desire “mama” that is so off putting. Stacey’s Mom is just a statement of fact.
And remind me to tell you the story of a time I was hanging in Piccadilly Circus and was approached by a man who asked if I was a “working girl.” And I thought he wanted to know about my job back home at a record store…
Elvis Presley – That’s All Right
I thought that too, ladymiss, but I looked up the lyrics earlier today to verify and was reminded of lines referring to Papa as well. The singer is reassuring his parents of his choice in a woman.
“High On You Mama” – Steve Miller Band
“Don’t you know that I’m high on you mama
Don’t you know that I’m high on you girl
Don’t you know that I’m high on a feeling
Don’t you know that I’m high cause you’re here”
“While you tinkered with a tailor someone sold you to a sailor
Goose Step Mama…OH yeah!”
great laugh
aloha
LD
I still think “Black Dog” is the winner…
Winning is for a Battle Royale. Last Man Standing is about stamina.
“Yama Yama Pretty Mama” – Richard Berry
I thought he was telling the “mama” (the object of his affections) that it’s “all right now” that his parents think she “ain’t no good” for him, because he wants her, “any way you do”. The singer uses “mama” both ways in the song, talking about what mama and poppa done told him, and in addressing the gal.
“Keep On Truckin'” – Hot Tuna
“Keep on truckin mama,
truck my blues away
I said, Keep on truckin mama,
truck my blues away
Here You come Babe as big as sin
I can tell what you been doin by the shape your in
So Keep on truckin mama,
truck my blues away…”
Otis Redding, Hard to Handle
You may be right. If anyone was confused enough to manage the meaning of those lyrics it was Elvis.
“Rock, Pretty Mama” – Billy Adams
He was probably all shook up at the time.
I’m with Bobby: there is discussion of Little Mama and Mama/Papa, so I sort of took it as discussion of 2 different people.
Tough Mama, Bob Dylan (from Planet Waves). Great song.
“Don’t worry, don’t worry, Mama.” The Joker — Steve Miller Band
I have the feeling that Steve Miller likes the word and uses it a lot, but I can’t think of any more examples other than the one Tonyola posted above.
Neil Young-Motorcycle Mama
Motorcycle Mama
Won’t you lay your big spike down
I was thinking the same thing, that Steve Miller probably used “mama” in 90% of his songs, without really having anything to back it up.
A group called Sailcat had a 1972 hit with a song by the same name.
“Tell your Daddy and your Mama too
You got something better to do
Stick around the house the rest of your life
You’re eighteen you can do what you like
You’ll be the queen of my highway
My motorcycle mama
We’ll see the world through my Harley.”
Gotta love the Rex Warehouse!
Boston – “Let Me Take You Home Tonight”
“Let me take you home tonight
Mamma now it’s alright”
And another Dylan one, “Tell Me Mama”
“oooh mama, oooh mama, oooh mama / you’ve got me on your wavelength” Van Morrison
Dylan, Crash on the Levee “Oh mama, ain’t you gonna miss your best friend now?”
LMS!
“Hip Shakin’ Mama” – Jackie Lee Cochran
“Mama-say mama-sah ma-ma-coo-sah”
Discuss amongst yourselves
aloha
LD