Alan Jackson turned a joke between him and some family members into “I Don’t Even Know Your Name,” then watched the song reach No. 1 on the country chart on Sept. 5, 1995. It stayed there for one week and became his 11th career chart-topper.

Jackson released the song on May 15, 1995, as the fifth and final single from Who I Am, even though it had already hit the country chart two days earlier, dated May 13. The track began as something Jackson laughed about with relatives, but he wrote and recorded a demo while he was on the road, and his brother-in-law eventually pushed him to put it out.

The song tells the story of a man who goes to a bar, drinks too much and ends up marrying a waitress. It closes with the line, “I’m married to a waitress, and I don’t even know her name.” That ending helped make the tune one of the more unusual entries in Jackson’s catalog at the time, especially for an artist already known for ballads such as “Drive (For Daddy Gene),” “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)” and “Remember When.”

It also fit into a run of hits that had already shown Jackson could move easily between styles. He had recently scored with honky tonk songs including “Chattahoochee,” “Summertime Blues,” “Mercury Blues” and “Don’t Rock the Jukebox.” In that sense, “I Don’t Even Know Your Name” was about as close as he had come then to a novelty song, but the chart results left little doubt that listeners were willing to follow him there. By Sept. 5, the joke had become a No. 1 record, and Jackson had another career milestone to add to a long list of them.