Ruth Brown - Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean Live [Americana] 4K Remastered 5

Written by Johnny Wallace and released by Ruth Brown in 1952. It was her third number-one record on the US Billboard R&B chart and her first pop chart hit. Brown re-recorded the song in 1962 when it made number 99 on the US pop chart.

Many have since covered the song including Anita Wood (1960), Sarah Vaughan (1962), Delaney & Bonnie (1970), Koko Taylor (1975), and Susan Tedeschi (1998).

Ruth Brown had run away from home when she was seventeen — she’d wanted to become a singer, and she eloped with a trumpet player, Jimmy Brown, who she married and whose name she kept even though the marriage didn’t last long.

She quickly joined Lucky Millinder’s band, but that too didn’t last long. Millinder’s band, at the time, had two singers already, and the original plan was for Brown to travel with the band for a month and learn how they did things, and then to join them on stage. She did the travelling for a month part, but soon found herself kicked out when she got on stage.

She did two songs with the band on her first night performing live with them, and apparently went down well with the audience, but that was all she was meant to do on that show, so one of the other musicians asked her to go and get the band members drinks from the bar, as they were still performing. She brought them all sodas on to the stage… and Millinder said “I hired a singer, not a waitress — you’re fired. And besides, you don’t sing well anyway”.