The true origins of a song—especially a co-written one—can be hard to pin down. That’s certainly true of the world’s most famous telephone number song, “867-5309/Jenny” by Tommy Tutone. Co-writers Alex Call and Jim Keller scored a major hit with their tongue-in-cheek song about the girl to call for a good time. And people with the phone number 867-5309 or the name Jenny, Jennie, or Jenni never knew another day of peace in their lives.
According to Keller, Jenny was his real ex-girlfriend. According to Call, there was no Jenny.
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Jim Keller’s Theory: Jenny Was His Ex, Not a Hooker
In a 1982 interview with People, Jim Keller said that he wrote “867-5309/Jenny” after his real ex-girlfriend, Jenny. Describing her as a “regular girl, not a hooker” (nice), Keller said that his friends wrote her name and number on a bar bathroom wall. “I called her on a dare, and we dated for a while,” Keller said.
“I haven’t talked with her since the song became a hit, but I hear she thinks I’m a real jerk for writing it,” he added.
Alex Call’s Theory: The Name and Number Were Both Fake
Jim Keller’s story is compelling. But according to Alex Call in a 2004 interview with SongFacts, his co-writer’s theory is more fantastical than what really happened. “I actually just came up with the ‘Jenny’ and the telephone number and the music and all that just sitting in my backyard,” Call explained. “There was no Jenny. I don’t know where the number came from. I was just trying to write a four-chord rock song, and it just kind of came out.”
Call said that Keller later came over, and he showed him his idea for “867-5309/Jenny”. Keller told Call that it sounded like a phone number you would see written on the bathroom wall at a bar. “We had a good laugh,” Call said. “I said, ‘That’s exactly right. That’s exactly what it is.’”
“Tommy Tutone’s been using the story for years that there was a Jenny and she ran a recording studio and so forth. It makes a better story, but it’s not true. That sounds a lot better than I made it up under a plum tree in my backyard.”
So, Which Is It?
To Jim Keller’s credit, his testimony about “867-5309/Jenny” came closer to the song’s 1981 release date than Alex Call’s 2004 backstory. But Call also has a point in that the story about a real Jenny is more compelling than the reality behind a lot of hit pop songs: he just made it up. So, it would make sense that Tommy Tutone leaned into that narrative.
Frankly, both theories could be true in their own way. Keller really might have dated a woman he called from a bar bathroom. Call could have really come up with the name separate from Keller’s story. Jennifer saw a steep increase in popularity between 1960 and 1970, meaning that there were plenty of Jennys walking around by 1981.
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