Does anyone know if “Jenny (867-5309)” by Tommy Tutone was based on a true story and if it used Jenny’s real number?
Has anyone heard stories of unfortunate people with that number?
I saw in the message board history that (one instance of) the number was for sale on Ebay.
Snopes:
The Tommy Tutone song “Jenny (867-5309)” drove the phone companies (and their customers) nuts.
That answers all of my questions nicely, thank you!
Wow… 5 messages a day… I didn’t think that after all these years people would still call it that much. I’m especially surprised that some guys seem to think there’s an easy woman on the other line!
Yeah but arent all of these stories …AFTER it ?
I stand corrected. It answers half of my question, and is enough to satisfy me for now.
Back when the song came out, I was living in Fort Bragg, NC. From what I was told, that phone number belonged to an elementary school in my area (never dialed it myself…really!). Our phone number at the time was 867-4622.
And I really have to wonder whether they have assigned a 530 exchange in area code 867…
:: pause ::
:: checks CNAC site ::
Evidently, no.
Fortunately.
As was mentioned in the snpopes article, a young woman named Jenny figured she should be allowed to have the phone number. She put alot of work into it. I don’t remeber all the details, but here is a reference, not to here, but to the issue.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/nation/7957736.htm
In the Murfreesboro area, 867-5309 gets you a place called Auto Outlet, I think. I read an article a while back about how they enjoy their famous phone number, and like to talk to people who ask for Jenny. i would never think of calling a number like that, it just seems freaky to me.
In a book by Peter Gammons, he related a story about a game that the Boston Red Sox were playing once in which the Red Sox scored multiple runs in many innings and the press box people were challenging each other to call the number that the linescore revealed.
I was watching a short-lived VH1 program awhile back where they explained the stories behind songs and on one episode they did “Jenny”. I’m a little fuzzy on the exact details, but the members of Tommy Tutone said they knew a girl named Jenny who gave them that number. However, they found out after they wrote the song that the number didn’t exactly belong to Jenny… it belonged to Jenny’s parents.
Bumped.
The Wiki article, I just saw today, has an interesting account of how a particular phone number can become a commodity: 867-5309/Jenny - Wikipedia
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Moving thread from General Questions to Cafe Society.
Way back around 1998-1999, I was working with another guy (both of us in our early 20s) and we decided to call the number. We were rewarded with a lengthy voice mail greeting from what sounded like a youngish woman telling us to fuck off and stop being immature dicks.
Which I can’t say she was wrong in that instance.
I just called the number for my local exchange. It’s apparently an organization or business of some kind - doesn’t say what - and asks you to enter the name of the person you’re trying to reach. No reference to the song.
GAH!! The local middle school band gets taught this damn song every single year and they play it in every damned parade they march in. It’s a horrible earworm.
Am… am I a zombie?
There’s a local company here- though damn if I can remember their name or what they do- and they have that number and use the titular line of the song in their commercials.
While this is bumped, some trivia: Alex Call, the song’s co-writer, was in the band Clover with Hugh Cregg, aka Huey Lewis, until the band broke up and Huey formed the News…