The Real People Assigned Phone Number 867-5309 Faced Years of Prank Calls
The Real People Assigned Phone Number 867-5309 Faced Years of Prank Calls
John LemboThu, October 15, 2026 at 3:45 AM UTC
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Lorene Burns and her husband began getting calls at 2 a.m. asking for Jenny. Lorene’s husband couldn’t hear very well and thought callers were asking for their adult son, Jimmy.
“Jimmy doesn’t live here anymore,” he’d say, according to a wire story in The Lakeland Ledger.
Like others with the phone number 867-5309, the couple had lived in relative anonymity before Tommy Tutone turned those seven digits into a hit song.
The band released “867-5309/Jenny” on Nov. 16, 1981. The song was written by Jim Keller, Tommy Tutone’s guitarist, and Alex Call, and tells the story of a man who gets Jenny’s phone number off a wall.
Tommy Heath and Jim Keller of the rock band Tommy Tutone pose for a studio portrait session in 1981 in Los Angeles, Calif.Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images
The number belonged to real people in different area codes, leading to a litany of prank calls.
“Within a few weeks,” an administrative assistant named Jennifer Gray told People magazine, “I got hundreds of obscene calls.”
Keller told People that Jenny was a real girl whose number he got off a bar’s bathroom wall. Tommy Heath, Tommy Tutone’s lead singer, also said Jenny was real. But he told WGN that he knew her and wrote the number on the wall as a joke.
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Call, former lead singer of a band called Clover that featured Huey Lewis on harmonica, disputed both claims.
“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 told Songfacts. “That’s kind of my method: I play and sing and stuff comes out, then I hone it, I work on it. It came from somewhere, I don’t know, but it was good.”
The public agreed. “867-5309/Jenny” peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped its Mainstream Rock chart.
“I’ve met a few Jennys who have said, ‘Oh, you’re the guy who ruined my high school years.’ But for the most part, Jennys are happy to have the song,” Call said.
The number took on a new purpose in March when 272-867-5309 became a cancer support hotline, according to People. The cause is personal for Heath, 79, who told People he’s dealing with skin cancer and has relatives battling the disease.
“When someone is depressed and confused, they’ll go, ‘Hey, I’ll call 867-5309. Somebody’s waiting there to help me.’ And I hope they smile at that point,” he said.
Related: 40 Years Ago: The Monkees Score a Top 20 Hit for the First Time Since 1968
This story was originally published by Men's Journal on Oct 15, 2026, where it first appeared in the Entertainment section. Add Men's Journal as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
