Great One-Hit Wonders

#4 - Tommy Tutone - 867-5309/Jenny (1981)
What an odd song this was. A tribute to those phone numbers you always see on bathroom walls purporting to be the personal line to a woman who'll shag you no matter how much of an idiot you appear to be. Of course these numbers are probably written by jilted lovers who take great delight in flooding their estranged partner with thousands of calls from horny men. Or so I've heard anyway. Of course in this song he's far too sensible to actually call the number and does something questionable with it instead ("I tried my imagination, but I was disturbed").

The band formed in 1978 and their first single "Angel Say No" scraped into the Top 40. The two follow-ups off their self-titled first album failed to crack the charts but the album sales were good enough to earn a support spot on the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers tour. In 1981 this song, from the Album "Tommy Tutone 2" (imaginative!) became their biggest hit ever - reaching the Billboard Top 5 and propelling the album into the top 20.

The next single failed miserably, as did their album "National Emotion" which barely charted and led band leaders Tommy Heath and Jim Keller to disband the group. The name was back, however, in 1992 as an entirely Heath-driven project. The last album was 1998's "Tutone.rtf". Incidentally this contained the song "Jenny's Calling", as sequel of sorts to the big hit, about Jenny's daughter. Very mysterious.

In the interests of research I attached the standard Melbourne prefix of '9' to the start of this number and called it. It actually comes up (on my phone at least) as "Number not in use". There's a conspiracy in that if you look hard enough.

Where Are They Now? The frankly irritating Tutone official site has no news on a new album - but a tour dates section lets us know that as late as the 2nd of this month they played a show in Pensacola, Florida (at the Quiet Water Boardwalk Bushwhacker Festival no less) alongside fellow one-hit superstars "The Knack" - who we may get to eventually. Tutone lives! Even if the infamous phone number doesn't. Try it in your own area code - but don't mention me if you get done for nuisance calling.