Uncle Noname

Lyrics

[Intro]
(an oven timer, a tray sliding out)
He gave the world a cookie and the world kept the cookie.

[Verse 1]
He was a talent agent first — the first Black agent at William Morris,
signed Simon and Garfunkel, worked the room, worked the door.
And he baked. He always baked. Aunt Della's recipe,
sent the cookies out with the contracts, that's how it started, see.
Nineteen seventy-five, a shop on Sunset with a line,
Panama hat and a kaftan and the smile that was the sign.

[Chorus]
Famous Amos! It was his face and it was his name!
And by 'eighty-five he'd lost the company,
and by the nineties he had lost the RIGHT to say his own name
on a bag of anything he'd ever want to bake again.
Not the business. Not the brand. His NAME. And his FACE.
He could not use his own face. So he made a joke of it.

[Verse 2]
He called the new one Uncle Noname. Say that out loud.
Uncle NO NAME. A grown man's whole career
folded into a pun that he made at his own expense
'cause the only thing they'd left him was the joke and the ingredients.
Later Uncle Wally's, later muffins, later fine.
He kept going. Seventy, eighty, kept going the whole time.

[Chorus]

[Bridge]
And when they finally brought him back to do a little ad,
the man in the hat played himself, and got paid, and was glad,
which is either lovely or unbearable, depending how you look,
and I have gone back and forth on it more times than I can say.
He died in twenty twenty-four. Eighty-eight years old.
The cookie's on the shelf tonight. It doesn't know his name.

[Chorus]

[Outro]
(the tray set down)
Uncle Noname.
He made the joke first. That's how you survive it.