Meri Wilson – "Telephone Man" (1977)

Hey, baby, I’m the telephone man

You just show me where you want it

And I’ll put it where I can

(I figure that if I’m going to phone in a 2 or 3 lines post, that post should feature a phone-themed record – right?)

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Meri Wilson Edgmon was born on a U.S. Air Force base in Japan  in 1949, but grew up in Georgia.  She later moved to Dallas, where she sang jingles for radio commercials as well as performing in clubs and restaurants.

“Telephone Man” was inspired by a brief affair that Meri had with the telephone company tech who installed the phone in her Dallas apartment.  

“I swore for years that I’d never admit in public that I dated that telephone man,” Meri later revealed.  “But the truth is, yes, I did and wrote a song about it.  I don’t want to say anymore because I’m now happily married, but not to the telephone man.”

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“Telephone Man” was co-produced by Owen “Boomer” Castleman (a singer-songwriter who played with John Denver and Michael Nesmith before they were famous and later moved to Nashville and became a prominent studio guitarist) and Jim Rutledge (the lead singer for Bloodrock, whose 1971 hit, “D.O.A.,” was one of my favorite records when I was in college).  

Castleman took the record to 17 different record companies, none of which were interested in releasing it.  So he created his own label, pressed a few hundred copies of “Telephone Man,” and drove around Texas handing out copies to radio stations and record stores. 

The record took off, peaking at #18 on the Billboard “Hot 100” chart, and making it into the top ten in the UK.

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Meri followed up “Telephone Man” with a few other double entendre novelty records – “Dick the DJ” and “Peter the Meter Reader” among them – but none of them had much success.  She later moved back to Georgia and taught high school music.

“I wish my claim to fame had been a serious one rather than with a novelty song,” she told an interviewer years after “Telephone Man” was released.  “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.”

Sadly, Meri Wilson died in 2002 when she lost control of her car while driving in a freak ice storm in Americus, Georgia.  She was only 53.

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Click here to listen to “Telephone Man.”

Click here to listen to “Internet Man,” an updated version of “Telephone Man” that Meri Wilson recorded in 1999.