Originally written with French lyrics, the song was rendered in English in 1971 to become an international hit for the Pop-Tops, Joël Daydé (fr) and Roger Whittaker.
A hit in Italy with Italian lyrics for Dalida and in France in its original French for Nicoletta, "Mamy Blue" was also rendered in a number of other languages in cover versions recorded by a good number of local recording artists across continental Europe, while a "local cover" of the English-language version by Charisma reached #1 in South Africa.
[1] In May 1971, Alain Milhaud, a Swiss record producer based in Spain, acquired the song for Pop-Tops, a Spanish group he managed.
Milhaud produced the Pop-Tops' recording of "Mamy Blue" in a session in London after the group's frontman Phil Trim wrote English lyrics for the song.
The French Barclay label expediently had the song covered by both Joël Daydé and Nicoletta: Daydé's version – featuring Phil Trim's English lyric – was recorded at Olympic Sound Studio in London and the Decca Studio in Paris with Angela Morley as arranger, while Nicoletta's version was produced by Hubert Giraud and was the first recording of the song with Giraud's French lyrics.
[1] The Pop-Tops and Joël Daydé both reached #1 on the French charts with "Mamy Blue" while the Nicoletta version rose as high as #4, affording the singer her career record.
In South Africa, "Mammy Blue" was recorded by the session group Charisma featuring vocalists Paddy Powell and Stevie Vann: produced by Graeme Beggs, this version spent twelve weeks at #1, making it the second longest running South African #1 hit, and the longest running #1 hit by a local artist.
The English version of "Mammy Blue" has also been recorded by Horace Andy, Julio Iglesias, Bobby Curtola, Pascalis Arvanitidis the Les Humphries Singers, Cherry Laine, Vicky Leandros, Eivind Løberg (no), Muslim Magomayev, Genya Ravan, Demis Roussos, Laima Vaikule; Nicoletta, and Nancy Sit, besides introducing the song in its original French, also recorded the English version.
The Finnish version of "Mamy Blue" was also recorded by Fredi in 1972 and by Kirka in 1974 Translated renderings of "Mamy Blue" have also been recorded by Anda Călugăreanu (ro) (as "O, Mamă, Tu") Romanian, Crazy Boys (as "Dla mamy blues") (pl) Polish, Laércio de Freitas (pt) Portuguese, Kjerstin Dellert Swedish, Yehoram Gaon Hebrew, Karel Gott (as "Ó, Mami, Dík") Czech, Mjöll Holm Icelandic, Kati Kovács Hungarian, Marcela Laiferová (sk) (as "Mami-Blue") Slovak, Anne-Karine Strøm Norwegian, Miro Ungar (hr) Croatian, Vivi Flemish, Lilya Vavrin Ukrainian, Salomon Suvanto Finnish and Emil Dimitrov Bulgarian.