Tommy Tutone
Tommy Tutone
Tommy Tutone-Gap Rating 5/10
Growing up as an Air Force brat exposed Tommy Heath, best known as 80s pop-rocker, Tommy Tutone, to a smorgasbord of musical influences. From his grade school days in Texas listening to Buddy Holly and Elvis, to high school in Montana when surf and folk music held his attention, on to his early college days in Japan when he was caught in the tidal wave of Beatle-mania that hit that country with a vengeance.

Emerging into American culture shoulder-to-shoulder with MTV back in 1982, Tommy Tutones hit single,"867-5309 (Jenny)" launched his band on a speed-of-sound trajectory to a permanent place in pop history. Yet the mega-hit also left the somewhat shy, soft-spoken performer with the label of "one-hit-wonder", an unfortunate marker for an artist whose catalog of songs reflects a diversity and rich texture that takes the listener far beyond the simple pop rhythms of Jenny.

Getting his other work, which just as effectively captures the cache of the times as Jenny, before an audience has always been a priority for Heath but the crowd usually bests him with chants of "Jenny-Jenny" half-way through the set. 

"I'm always happy to play Jenny for a crowd but I make sure they get a full dose of my other music both new and classic first ", Heath related.

The 1998 release of tutone.rtf (Rich Text Files) on the new San Francisco-based indie label, Secret Disc, went a long way in re-educating die-hard fans and enlightening a new generation of listeners with tracks such as "The Grifter's Prayer", about a desperate guy praying for one big lucky financial windfall, "Happy Birthday Anyway", "The World Ain't Flat", and a sequel "Jenny's Calling". 

With three albums of work from the 80s, a European-released pop meets R&B album entitled Nervous Love in the mid-90s, and immortality status from any number of New Wave compilations, Tommy has never stopped writing, recording and performing. Thus, the tag "come back" doesn't really resonate with this artist whose phone number song served as the soundtrack to the lives of millions over a decade and a half ago.

 "Its not so much a come-back", says Tommy,  "Lets say I'm resurfacing."