After the signing of the Judds to RCA, Maher went to work trying to identify their sound. Like Kenny O’Dell had before him, the producer was having some difficulty. It seemed that the Judds liked to sing anything and everything, but they didn’t have a style that was strictly their own. After performing many different numbers for Maher, the girls kept coming back to something Brent had never heard before: “Mama He’s Crazy.” It was this unknown song that came closest to a sound that Maher thought might work on the country charts. When he inquired about where Naomi had found it, she told him about their earlier work with Kenny O’Dell. Brent called O’Dell and started talking about “Mama He’s Crazy,” saying he wanted to use the song with a new act he was recording. O’Dell was perplexed. He couldn’t imagine how Maher came across the song. Kenny had never done a demo on it and in fact, couldn’t even lay his hands on a lyric sheet! Then Brent told O’Dell who the new act was and it all came back to him. Kenny proceeded then and there to give Maher full authorization to go ahead and cut “Mama He’s Crazy” with RCA’s newest signees, the Judds.
RCA held “Mama He’s Crazy” until after the label got a chance to see how the duo’s first single “Had A Dream (For The Heart)” would do. When that record went to #17, the company felt they had a strong chance to make the Judds’ next release a hit. To accomplish this, RCA decided to make and release a video based around “Mama He’s Crazy’s” story line. These images would be the first ones ever seen of the mother/daughter team. With a strong record and video, RCA shipped the Judds’ new product in early 1984. By March, the song was climbing the charts, and the video had become one of CMT’s hottest. On August 4, 1984, “Mama He’s Crazy” reached #1, beginning a string of eight consecutive chart-toppers for the duo. Over the course of the next five years, the Judds would release sixteen singles and only two would fail to hit #1 (a cover of Elvis Presley’s “Don’t Be Cruel” peaked at only #10, and “Give A Little Love” was a near-miss at #2). Incidentally, “Mama He’s Crazy” holds the distinction of being only the second country song performed by a female duo to top Billboard’s country singles chart up to that time (the first had been 1953’s “I Forgot More Than You’ll Ever Know” by the Davis Sisters).
Very few country music acts in history would have the influence or the following of Naomi and Wynonna Judd. On records, on videos and in concerts, their ability to sell themselves and their music would be second to none. Overnight, they became entertainment giants, and their special sound would not only set them apart from the other acts of the time, but would defy any attempt at imitation. Therefore, it’s all the more ironic that this family team had once been unable to garner any attention even from the smallest record companies, and that the song which made them stars would have been lost and forgotten if not for an auto accident. Even the soap opera that inspired Kenny O’Dell to write “Mama He’s Crazy” couldn’t have invented a plot that bizarre.
