It peaked at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and #16 on the Billboard Top Tracks chart in May 1982.
On March 28, 2008, Tommy Tutone lead singer Tommy Heath stated on the WGN Morning News that the number was real and it was the number of a girl he knew. As a joke, he wrote it on a bathroom wall in a motel where they were staying. "We laughed about it for years," he said.
The song, released in late 1981, initially gained popularity on the American West Coast in January 1982; many who had the number soon abandoned it because of unwanted calls. Asking telephone companies to trace the calls was of no use, as Charles and Maurine Shambarger (then in West Akron, Ohio at +1-216-867-5309) learned when Ohio Bell explained "We don't know what to make of this. The calls are coming from all over the place." A little over a month later, they disconnected the number and the phone became silent.
In 1982, WLS radio obtained the number from a Chicago woman, receiving 22,000 calls in four days.
In 1982, Southwest Junior High School received up to two hundred calls daily asking for Jenny in area code 704.