Johnny Rivers, "Memphis"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMKQgnT_fTY

Jim Croce, "Operator"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2iS8XctJKo

I know it's the wrong decade and stuff....but I'm going with New Edition's Mr. Telephone Man  8)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTdxdr9pNnw

"Memphis"

On related subject matter:

Kraftwerk: The Telephone
Pete Shelley: Telephone Operator
Frank Zappa: Telephone Conversation
Yazoo: A after E except before C

Special mention:
Liam O'Gallagher: Border Dissolve in Audiospace

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/05/arts/05gallagher.html

In some circles, he is probably best known for sound art that combined performance, chance and technology to create surreal, sometimes funny works like “Border Dissolve in Audiospace” from 1970, a fuzzy, echoing recording in which directory operators are called and asked to look up various numbers.

“I wanted the phone number of the city zoo,” Mr. O’Gallagher asks dryly.

“The city jail?” the operator responds, in a high, officious voice.

“No, the city zoo, operator.”

I got a name... and it's Jim Croce
Operator

Beachwood 45789

Beachwood 45789


Well, if you're going to use those kinds of phone numbers...

Allan Sherman, Let's All Call Up AT&T and Protest to the President March

...back in 1963, people actually got mad at the change to all-digit dialing.  Phreaky :)

Well, if you're going to use those kinds of phone numbers...

Allan Sherman, Let's All Call Up AT&T and Protest to the President March

...back in 1963, people actually got mad at the change to all-digit dialing.  Phreaky :)


I can see a niche market for rotary phones.  You would require a digital/analogue interface, but that's no problem to set up.  Otherwise, they'll be for people who collect old gaslights and stuff!
;D

The rotary telephone was one technology I did not see why people were not eager to give up. Rotary was familiar.  That's what they knew.  My parents didn't have any love for rotary.  We always had keypad phones at our house.  So you're at a friend's house and you say, "Hey, can I use your phone?"
"Sure, go ahead."
"Oh, god, it's one of THESE."
Six
clickety-click, clickety-click, clickety-click, clickety-click, clickety-click, clickety-click.
Seven
clickety-click, clickety-click, clickety-click, clickety-click, clickety-click, clickety-click, clickey-click.
Three
clickety-click, clickety-click, clickety-click...

"Hell with it.  I'll just write them a letter!"

So, yeah, it would be a niche market but you'd have the nostalgia people and -- if you did some marketing -- the college sophisticated f**ks.  "Let's rebel against the fascist digital aged, dude!"
"All right! How to?"
clickety-click, clickety-click, clickety-click, clickety-click, clickety-click, clickety-click.

http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/11/angry3.gif

I can see a niche market for rotary phones.  You would require a digital/analogue interface, but that's no problem to set up.  Otherwise, they'll be for people who collect old gaslights and stuff!


If you have a land line, pulse dialing still works.  (If you don't have a rotary phone, you can pulse-dial by rapidly pressing the handset switch on any land line phone.  Tricky to do it accurately, but easily learned, not that there's any use for the skill beyond getting a knowing grin from phellow fone phreaks.)

More conveniently, it's a pretty easy hack to attach a rotary phone's headset to a modern cell phone.  It's almost steampunky in its primitiveness.

Or you can get fancy, and put the cell phone into the rotary phone, so that you can make wirless calls using a rotary dial.  A rotary-dial phone that doesn't plug into anything, but actually works.  (You'd need one more minor hack involving running a couple of wires from the cell phone's vibrator-motor, and a slightly larger battery, to drive the original rotary phone's ringer, but that's a lot easier than turning the pulse dials into keypad presses.)

(Why yes, I am a telco nerd.  Why do you ask?)