The Hit
The story of how Meri Wilson’s “Telephone Man” stumbled into daylight is without question the most interesting thing about it, so I’ll start there.
The tangled paths of her life (see below) led her to performing as the lead in a trio that played cabaret clubs Dallas, TX with names like Arthur’s Papillion, and (so good), Daddy’s Money. Somebody spotted her at one of them - Daddy’s Money, which, according to a site simply called Jon Kutner, was/is a Texas restaurant chain (indirectly confirmed), not a cabaret - and sources vary as to who saw her first: an obituary (mild spoiler) in Variety names producer Owen Castleman; Wikipedia goes with Jim Rutledge, the former front-man for a band called Bloodrock (a taste of them), who then introduced Wilson to Castleman; Jon Kutner provides the fullest story - and quotes Wilson directly (or claims to) - so I’m letting that be my truth on the question.
In Jon Kutner’s telling, the owner of the Daddy’s Money chain saw Wilson performing in Atlanta (Wikipediaagrees here, flagging “Underground Atlanta), liked what he heard, and told her to move to Texas to perform there. She’d been working some originals into her act and, with the encouragement of her backing band, she started playing a goofy (and true) little tune about an affair with an AT&T engineer. It got a decent reception from audiences, a completely different producer named Allen Reynolds among them, who recorded the first demo. That version was stripped down to acapella backed by finger-snaps, and it went nowhere. This circles back to the story noted above, only Jon Kutner agrees with Variety that Castleman saw her first, while calling Owen “Boomer” Castleman a musician, not a producer (and Wikipedia is the sole source for the nickname, “Boomer”).
That distinction between musician versus producer works better with the Jon Kutner narrative because, after getting “laughed out the door” by 17 different labels, Castleman decided to set up his own label, BNA, to market Wilson’s song. He hit up radio stations and record stores all over Texas, sometimes with Wilson tagging along. She recalled one occasion where they walked into a record store and heard “Telephone Man” playing over the speakers from a radio station, at which point they both called that station over and over pretending to be listeners begging to hear the song one more time. A little low-tech guerrilla marketing never hurt anyone’s career…
None of those sources answers the question of how Meri Wilson’s novelty tune went from scrounging around the dusty corners of Texas to a No. 18 hit in the U.S., No. 6 in the UK, No. 9 in both Ireland and…New Zealand, No. 27 in Australia and No. 46 in Canada. Or how it went gold, for that matter. It did happen, obviously, and that got Wilson signed to the GRT Records label, where she recorded an entire album. And now…
The Rest of the Story
“I wish my claim to fame had been a serious one rather than with a novelty song. It was fun to have a hit record but in my heart I was disappointed that I couldn’t have had a real piece of music out there.”
- Meri Wilson
Wilson was born in Nagoya, Japan, in 1949, and as an Air Force kid. The family located to Marietta, Georgia where she grew up, according to Wikipedia, in a “musical family.” Her choice of majors at Indiana University and, later Georgia State, where she earned a master’s degree in music education, follows the logic of that origin story. Wilson was also a multi-instrumentalist - piano, flute and cello - and had more than enough education to write her own material. Wikipedia says she started as a “guitar soloist,” a phrase I translated to the 1970s singer/songwriter genre, but there’s no record of her getting traction. A car accident put her in a full-body cast in 1975, which I’m guessing is how she wound up back in Georgia where the owner of Daddy’s Money gave her the little break that led to her big one…by which I mean, gigs at Daddy’s Money paid badly enough that she sang jingles for commercials and did modeling on the side to round out her income.
As elaborated above, Wilson backed into her hit - and that’s before touching on the sheer, wonderful weirdness of “Telephone Man.” The “Castleman remix” didn’t flesh out the music all that much - it’s mostly a bass riff, timed with taps in a high-hat and some electric organ for melodic fill. On the vocal/lyrical side, Wikipedia gets it largely right - “filled with suggestive lyrics and her breathy squealing voice” - only picture that with summer-camp fills like “singin’ do-la-li-la-li-la, bum-shicky-bum.” All in all, it sounds like something a live band would do as bit while the guitarist mended a broken string. Still, with all its success, it was well worth the $228 someone fronted to record it. It probably helped Wilson nailed it on the first take…
…which was the name of her 1977 debut album, First Take. When the producers at GRT asked Wilson about influences, she named Crystal Gayle and Anne Murray, so she and they worked up the rest of the album with material in that vein. GRT chose two singles to push - “Rub-A-Dub-Dub,” another novelty number to stay on brand, and “Midnight in Memphis” to attempt another direction - but neither of them went anywhere, never mind charted. And things dried up generally from there.
“Telephone Man” enjoyed a cult second act when Dr. Demento found it, and Wilson floated some other novelty songs - e.g., “Peter the Meter Reader,” “Dick The DJ,” “Santa's Coming,” and “My Valentine's Funny” - and even tried to re-work her signature song with “Internet Man” in 1999, all to no avail. She’d already surrendered to the day-job grind by then to become the choral director at an Atlanta high school in 1993, though, bless her beautiful heart, she continued singing - then with the Hotlanta Jazz Singers - and never let the dream die entirely.
Sadly, she died in a car crash in December 2002 on Georgia State Route 377 during an ice storm, which makes for a depressing end to such a charming story.
About the Sampler
There was no point in a sampler for this one: Spotify only has the one album Meri Wilson made. I covered the novelty material above, so, to honor her memory, here are the songs she’d hoped people would hear and love: “Silver Blue Mercedes,” “Two Sides,” “The Angel in Me,” “There a Whole Lot More,” “He Lost His Faith,” “Everytime I Sing a Love Song,” and "Itinerary" (the video for that one includes a nice tribute to Wilson).
Wilson’s voice isn’t the greatest, but it does have a certain quality and she knew how to work the phrasing - I’d call “Silver Blue Mercedes” and “Itinerary” the stand-outs on that count. I’ve also heard (and loved) countless singers with far, far worse voices. Pour one out for the career she wanted and might have had.
Till the next one…which, for the record, is one just about everyone knows.
The story of how Meri Wilson’s “Telephone Man” stumbled into daylight is without question the most interesting thing about it, so I’ll start there.
The tangled paths of her life (see below) led her to performing as the lead in a trio that played cabaret clubs Dallas, TX with names like Arthur’s Papillion, and (so good), Daddy’s Money. Somebody spotted her at one of them - Daddy’s Money, which, according to a site simply called Jon Kutner, was/is a Texas restaurant chain (indirectly confirmed), not a cabaret - and sources vary as to who saw her first: an obituary (mild spoiler) in Variety names producer Owen Castleman; Wikipedia goes with Jim Rutledge, the former front-man for a band called Bloodrock (a taste of them), who then introduced Wilson to Castleman; Jon Kutner provides the fullest story - and quotes Wilson directly (or claims to) - so I’m letting that be my truth on the question.
In Jon Kutner’s telling, the owner of the Daddy’s Money chain saw Wilson performing in Atlanta (Wikipediaagrees here, flagging “Underground Atlanta), liked what he heard, and told her to move to Texas to perform there. She’d been working some originals into her act and, with the encouragement of her backing band, she started playing a goofy (and true) little tune about an affair with an AT&T engineer. It got a decent reception from audiences, a completely different producer named Allen Reynolds among them, who recorded the first demo. That version was stripped down to acapella backed by finger-snaps, and it went nowhere. This circles back to the story noted above, only Jon Kutner agrees with Variety that Castleman saw her first, while calling Owen “Boomer” Castleman a musician, not a producer (and Wikipedia is the sole source for the nickname, “Boomer”).
That distinction between musician versus producer works better with the Jon Kutner narrative because, after getting “laughed out the door” by 17 different labels, Castleman decided to set up his own label, BNA, to market Wilson’s song. He hit up radio stations and record stores all over Texas, sometimes with Wilson tagging along. She recalled one occasion where they walked into a record store and heard “Telephone Man” playing over the speakers from a radio station, at which point they both called that station over and over pretending to be listeners begging to hear the song one more time. A little low-tech guerrilla marketing never hurt anyone’s career…
None of those sources answers the question of how Meri Wilson’s novelty tune went from scrounging around the dusty corners of Texas to a No. 18 hit in the U.S., No. 6 in the UK, No. 9 in both Ireland and…New Zealand, No. 27 in Australia and No. 46 in Canada. Or how it went gold, for that matter. It did happen, obviously, and that got Wilson signed to the GRT Records label, where she recorded an entire album. And now…
The Rest of the Story
“I wish my claim to fame had been a serious one rather than with a novelty song. It was fun to have a hit record but in my heart I was disappointed that I couldn’t have had a real piece of music out there.”
- Meri Wilson
Wilson was born in Nagoya, Japan, in 1949, and as an Air Force kid. The family located to Marietta, Georgia where she grew up, according to Wikipedia, in a “musical family.” Her choice of majors at Indiana University and, later Georgia State, where she earned a master’s degree in music education, follows the logic of that origin story. Wilson was also a multi-instrumentalist - piano, flute and cello - and had more than enough education to write her own material. Wikipedia says she started as a “guitar soloist,” a phrase I translated to the 1970s singer/songwriter genre, but there’s no record of her getting traction. A car accident put her in a full-body cast in 1975, which I’m guessing is how she wound up back in Georgia where the owner of Daddy’s Money gave her the little break that led to her big one…by which I mean, gigs at Daddy’s Money paid badly enough that she sang jingles for commercials and did modeling on the side to round out her income.
As elaborated above, Wilson backed into her hit - and that’s before touching on the sheer, wonderful weirdness of “Telephone Man.” The “Castleman remix” didn’t flesh out the music all that much - it’s mostly a bass riff, timed with taps in a high-hat and some electric organ for melodic fill. On the vocal/lyrical side, Wikipedia gets it largely right - “filled with suggestive lyrics and her breathy squealing voice” - only picture that with summer-camp fills like “singin’ do-la-li-la-li-la, bum-shicky-bum.” All in all, it sounds like something a live band would do as bit while the guitarist mended a broken string. Still, with all its success, it was well worth the $228 someone fronted to record it. It probably helped Wilson nailed it on the first take…
…which was the name of her 1977 debut album, First Take. When the producers at GRT asked Wilson about influences, she named Crystal Gayle and Anne Murray, so she and they worked up the rest of the album with material in that vein. GRT chose two singles to push - “Rub-A-Dub-Dub,” another novelty number to stay on brand, and “Midnight in Memphis” to attempt another direction - but neither of them went anywhere, never mind charted. And things dried up generally from there.
“Telephone Man” enjoyed a cult second act when Dr. Demento found it, and Wilson floated some other novelty songs - e.g., “Peter the Meter Reader,” “Dick The DJ,” “Santa's Coming,” and “My Valentine's Funny” - and even tried to re-work her signature song with “Internet Man” in 1999, all to no avail. She’d already surrendered to the day-job grind by then to become the choral director at an Atlanta high school in 1993, though, bless her beautiful heart, she continued singing - then with the Hotlanta Jazz Singers - and never let the dream die entirely.
Sadly, she died in a car crash in December 2002 on Georgia State Route 377 during an ice storm, which makes for a depressing end to such a charming story.
About the Sampler
There was no point in a sampler for this one: Spotify only has the one album Meri Wilson made. I covered the novelty material above, so, to honor her memory, here are the songs she’d hoped people would hear and love: “Silver Blue Mercedes,” “Two Sides,” “The Angel in Me,” “There a Whole Lot More,” “He Lost His Faith,” “Everytime I Sing a Love Song,” and "Itinerary" (the video for that one includes a nice tribute to Wilson).
Wilson’s voice isn’t the greatest, but it does have a certain quality and she knew how to work the phrasing - I’d call “Silver Blue Mercedes” and “Itinerary” the stand-outs on that count. I’ve also heard (and loved) countless singers with far, far worse voices. Pour one out for the career she wanted and might have had.
Till the next one…which, for the record, is one just about everyone knows.
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