Teen Forgot Lyrics to 'Hanky Panky,' Made Up His Own, and Scored a #1 Hit

Coming up next… an interview with Tommy James, a legend who technically recorded his first hit at just 15 years of age. He snuck into a club and heard today’s song Hanky Panky being played and noticed that the audience LOVED it. So he decided to cut the record himself. But he forgot the lyrics and made up some of his own. The recording wasn’t very good and he didn’t think it would go anywhere. The song was released and got some airplay. But it was forgotten until a few years later when it re-emerged after getting played at dance parties and then it was bootlegged and almost 100K copies of it were sold. 6 major labels picked up on this and a bidding war to sign the artist was brewing until a small label owned by a mobster threatened everyone and swooped in to sign this young artist. A short time later Hanky Panky hit #1 across America and to this day many people think the song was recorded by this now older artist. But come to find out it was the old crappy demo that many point to as the first punk rock song. The crazy story is next. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .