Momma's Waiting

Momma's Waiting (sometimes referred to as Mama's Waiting) is a country music song composed by Kenny Rogers and Terry Williams. It was first issued in 1970 on the album "Something's Burning" by Kenny Rogers & The First Edition of which they were both a member.

The song is about a man who has spent the last 13 years on death row in prison. However at the start of the song he is driving to his home to see his mother for the last time and the singer proclaims "When I first went wrong I should have turned to Momma / But it’s hard to get back up once you have fell". The haunting chorus makes it clear to us that the end is near with the singer telling us "It’s the last time I’ll see flowers in the morning/ It’s the last time I’ll hear robins in the spring /It’s the last time I’ll feel Momma’s arms around me / It’s the last chance here on earth I’ll have to sing".

In the second verse the singer leaves his mothers house and then drives away and is waiting his exaction, but sings "I can't help thinking somewhere Momma's Waiting, once again to see her big time boy come home".

There has been a certain amount of debate about the accuracy of the songs story. In real life the singer would not have been allowed out of prison to drive to his mothers house one last time before being executed. However, this is a song and as many say, songs and their stories do not always follow real life (as they are fiction, as are the worlds they are set it), others view the song as of a man waiting execution but dreaming of what he could have been if his life had turned out differently.

"Mommas Waiting" was issued first in 1970 on the album "Something's Burning" (which reached the top 30) and also as the B-side to that album's title cut, which reached #11 in the US and #8 in the United Kingdom that year.

Though never issued as a single in its own right the song was acclaimed by fans and critics alike and was included on the band's 1971 greatest hits album. Rogers later rerecorded the song as a solo act in 1978 for his chart topping country album "Love Or Something Like It".