Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US) a flighty young woman.

1924		Cliff ‘Ukelele Ike’ Edwards ‘Red Hot Mama’ 🎵 the sweetest girl in town [...] Red hot mama, you’re the one I need.
1925		Wash. Post 25 Jan. SM7: No noon hour on the college campus or in the office lunchroom would be complete without the words: ‘Apple sauce,’ ‘red-hot mama,’ ‘dumb-dora,’ ‘petting’.
1934		(con. 1920s) J.T. Farrell Young Manhood in Studs Lonigan (1936) 224: Glen Reaves and me had some red hot mammas dated up.
1935		The Two Leslies ‘Umpa Lumpa’ 🎵 ‘You brought me a fat old hen, when i wanted a hot mama’.
1936		Cab Calloway ‘My Girl Mezzanine’ 🎵 She’s the red hot mama from Bahama with the red hot cootchie-coo!
1941		J.M. Cain Mildred Pierce (1985) 344: To him, you were a red hot mamma the second he found out about you.
1950		Dan Burley ‘Back Door Stuff’ 25 Mar. [synd. col.] æScarlet Sister Marys’, red hot mamas [...] hotcha chicks, etc.
1951		M. Spillane Long Wait (1954) 68: Nice having a couple of red hots throw themselves at you in the same half-hour.
1981		H. Gould Fort Apache, The Bronx 57: She was a hot mama as well.
1990		J. Wambaugh Golden Orange (1991) 17: Vilma Draper, former queen of the hot mommas, had experienced silicone-curdle and sued Dr. Max Jenner.
1998		L. Stringer Grand Central Winter (1999) 124: It has Valentine out there already, a big, bad hot mama, taking the streets by storm.

2. (orig. US black) a large, hedonistic woman, often a habituée of saloons, bars and nightclubs; occas. used of men (cf. hot papa under papa n.).

1925		Rosa Henderson ‘It Takes a Two-Time Papa’ 🎵 It was just the other day, / I heard a red-hot mama say: / It takes a two-time papa / To make a one-time mama mad.
1929		J. Lait Broadway Melody 51: Eddie Kerns, from somewhere in the dark, joshing, called up, ‘Oh, you hot momma’.
1933		Blind Willie McTell ‘B & O Blues’ 🎵 Cause I got another hot mama, and she lives in Baltimore.
1950		Fads & Fancies 1 21/1: A rather fat woman of at least 50 took the evening’s prize [...] I wonder what this red-hot fat momma will say when [...] she finds the copy of Salty Stories.
1951		Green & Laurie Show Biz from Vaude to Video 31: Sophie Tucker, in later years to be billed as ‘The Last of The Red-Hot Mammas’.
1965		(con. 1930s) R. Wright Lawd Today 194: Hope they got some red-hot mamas up there.
1972		R.A. Wilson Playboy’s Book of Forbidden Words.

3. (US) a sexy woman, irrespective of her figure.

1925		Dos Passos Manhattan Transfer 307: My you’re a redhot mommer in that dress.
1936		M. Levin Old Bunch (1946) 76: Hot mama! That broad in the red suit is pretty zaftig.
1962		(con. WWII) J.O. Killens And Then We Heard The Thunder (1964) 75: A sharp like you must’ve had a whole lot of good-looking red-hot brown-skin mamas hot in behind you up in New York.
1981		H. Gould Fort Apache, The Bronx 155: She was a freak, all right, a hot little mama after all.
2004		(con. 1994) J.A. Juarez Brotherhood of Corruption 181: I was thinking about [...] all the hot mamas I had seen checking me out in my uniform.