very nice work Roger. he was a nutcase but sad near the end. one of his last performances, he'd hired two local kids to play with him. one on drums, the other on guitar. during much of the concert, on Long Island, Tiny would wave his hand to 'pick up the tempo' and the kids would look at each other and smirk. Right onstage behind him.
Also the sequin stripes on Tiny's tuxedo leg hung off, needing sewing.
He signed original sheet music for Tiptoe for me, so he was always a gentleman.

I happened to be listening to Randi Rhodes when she was working at WJNO, in South Florida, in the mid-nineties. She was interviewing Tiny Tim on the phone. As he nervously explained his health problems and his reluctance to see a doctor, Randi used reason, humor and common sense to try and convince him to seek medical attention. She cajoled, she pleaded, she insisted. She tried everything she could. This went on, on the air, for a good half hour. She never convinced him. He had thoroughly insulated himself in his own obsessive/compulsive bubble. He had his last heart attack shortly after that.

It really was an extraordinary thing to listen to. She was trying to save his life. His fears wouldn't let him take her advice.

It wasn't until a few years ago, stumbling upon Tiny Tim's old Reprise album in the collection of a grey-haired hippie, that I realized what a serious talent Khoury was. I wondered if there were ever any other way he could have earned his bread that didn't make a geek show out of him.

My father saw Tiny Tim, briefly, performing at a tulip festival in Western Canada. I think the year was 1984, maybe earlier.

Somewhere lives a yellowing Kodak picture of Tiny Tim taken at about 500 paces. IOW, it's a crap picture without knowing what you're looking at.

I still remember how famous he was, Roger. I was just a grade-school kid, but followed him on TV and in magazines. (His autobiography, which came out years later, is still fascinating!) His first album is/was amazing -- can we now buy the songs in digital form??

“Stay Down Here Where You Belong” - Irving Berlin (Performed in a haunting baritone by Tiny Tim.)

http://steinbolt1.tumblr.com/post/741604991/stay-down-here-where-you-belong-irving-berlin

From Irwin Chusid's book Songs in the Key of Z

Tiny Tim

When Tiny Tim first began to appear regularly on Laugh-In, most viewers who snickered at his antics probably figured he was a joke, a scriptwriter’s recurring one-liner. Little did those unsuspecting Nielsen couch-taters realize that the chalk-faced, corkscrew-coifed troubadour had a lengthy history--and would have an even longer future--on the fringes of showbiz. They were simply witnessing him at the peak of his popularity.

But as the world soon learned through his talk-show sitting and bizarre personal confessions, Tiny Tim was not comedic fiction. He was genuine. He was also a fluke: a guileless eccentric who suddenly attained heights of mega-stardom unprecedented in the annals of outsider art--then just as quickly spiraled back into the abyss of obscurity.

It was, after all, 1968. In the aftermath of LSD-sparked psychedelic, pop music was never weirder. Tiny had long hair. Maybe TV viewers thought he was a flower child. Actually, in his loathing of drugs and loose sex and his adoration for Nixon, Tiny was an anti-hippie.

Tiny Tim was a star for the 90s--the 1890s. He briefly tracked on the nation’s cultural radar by doing what he’d been doing for almost two decades, and what he would continue doing for three decades thereafter: rescuing melodic relics from dusty cellars and practicing equally antiquated chivalry in the worship of womanhood.

A lovely lass and a great song--they were Tiny’s recipe for contentment. He had three of the former in marriage, and thousands of the latter in performance. He was never less than a gentleman. He addressed all males as “Mr.” and--Woman’s Lib be damned--all females as “Miss.” His preferred age group for the opposite sex was 12 and 18, when, he insisted, “a woman is in her prime. That’s when they’re like ballplayers with a shot at winning the Most Valuable Player Award, or like Secretariat winning the Triple Crown.”

Tiny Tim is an outsider object lesson in two ways:

1. He embodies the compulsion to create against astronomical odds. He could never quit. He had a destiny, which he would fulfill to the grave, regardless of public indifference, lack of money, or changing musical fashions.
2. He demonstrated how far a genuine outsider musician could go without a manufactured makeover. No one else in this book appeared on The Tonight Show. Tiny tim made over 20 appearances. He also guested on the Andy Williams, Merv Griffin, and Red Skelton TV shows. He dueted with Bing Crosby. Played the Royal Albert Hall. Spent the night at Bob Dylan’s house. Performed on a Beatles album. And in true outsider form, accomplished it all without modifying his style one iota--that is, without compromise.

Not that he had any choice in the matter. Like any for-real outsider, Tiny Tim couldn’t be anything but himself.

Tiny Tim was born Herbert Khaury on April 12, 1932. His Lebanese father, Butros, and Jewish mother, Tillie, raised their only child in New York’s Washington Heights district. They despaired of their son’s propensity for failure: he dropped out of high school, was ridiculed as being “girlish” by kids in the neighborhood, and couldn’t hold delivery-boy jobs. He had three abiding preoccupations:

1. 78-rpm records--particularly of old pop songs from bygone generations.
2. Girls--Only the most beautiful (“classics” he called them), though he rarely got--or wanted--his hands on them.
3. The Brooklyn Dodgers (a loyalty later transferred to Los Angeles), though he was too much of a klutz to play the game.

During his youth, rather than romp outdoors with other kids, Herbert sprawled on the floor of his bedroom for entire afternoons and evenings listening to his beloved 78-rpm discs on a wind-up Victrola. Transported by voices long departed, he daydreamed of a glamorous future based on an obsession with the past. Tillie wanted her misfit son to be an accountant or a lawyer; Butros cautioned her, “Leave the boy alone. When he’s 13, 14 years old, he’ll be a genius.”

Instead of blossoming into genius, by age 20 Herbert had shocked his parents’ conservative Jewish friends with his long hair, his ragged Goodwill-reject attire (Tillie: “He dressed like a bum”), and his obsession with face creams and body lotions. He also expressed the unwavering conviction that Jesus Christ was his savior. Though Butros defended him, his mother was not so kind. “My mother never called me Herbie,” Tiny told biographer Harry Stein. “She always called me ‘dope.’” Tillie tried several times to get her son committed to Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital, but her husband forbade it.

The aching-hearted youth sought therapy by performing in squalid New York clubs. As his preferred tool of accompaniment, the husky six-fee-one-inch Meistersinger chose the weensy ukulele, an instrument that had gone out of fashion in the first FDR administration and never regained vogue (Arthur Godfrey notwithstanding). In Herbert’s nimble hands, it was the perfect counterpoint. It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that ‘pling.’

Tiny Tim began in the early Eisenhower years, strumming his uke and crooning Vaudeville museum pieces at any talent show or smoke-filled gin den that would let him onstage. Halloween arrived early: he quickly gained a reputation for his stringy shoulder-length hair, mismatched carnival barker duds, and powdered face. He was a lone bird, and eventually attracted a small following. This cult included a succession of sleazoid agents and “business advisors,” who managed his money so deftly that young Khaury usually managed to not have any.

Harry Stein described one particular mise-en-scene that symbolized the tawdriness of Tiny’s predicament:

Hubert’s Museum and Live Flea Circus epitomized the underside of show business, the dream gone sour. Located in the basement of a penny arcade in…Times Square, Hubert’s was as low as a performer could sink. Customers…showed up more to gawk than to be entertained, and they were rarely disappointed. The great pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander, grown old and fat, was once reduced to putting himself on display…. So was Jack Johnson, the black former heavyweight champ…. On the same bill as magicians, jugglers, and strongmen, there was invariably an assortment of human curiosities: Sealo…had little seal flippers instead of arms; Jose de Leon, another regular, had no appendages whatsoever…. Albert-Alberta…was billed as a living, breathing hermaphrodite…. In the back, Professor Roy Heckler [took] his trained fleas through their turns.

Tiny Tim played Hubert’s in 1959, when he was known as Larry Love. His stay in the basement was remarkable neither for its duration nor for the attention he received. The fact is, he fit right in.

At Hubert’s, “Larry” was marqueed as “The Human Canary,” because of his penchant for singing falsetto. He was also billed over the years as Darry Dover, Rollie Dell, or whatever nom du jour sounded glamorous at the time.

In 1961, he acquired a manager, George King, who described to Stein his first meeting with the young singer: “He had long, scraggly hair, he was wearing an old raincoat, and he had this white gook all over his face…. [H]e was so emaciated from that god dam diet of his that he looked like he’d come from a concentration camp.” King, who genuinely liked Tiny and appreciated his talent, got him gigs at such Greenwich Village hotspots as Café Bizarre, the Bitter End, and Café Wha. King also claims to have coined for his client the permanent moniker “Tiny Tim.”

Tiny introduced his Victrola-vintage repertoire at the Little Theatre around 1962. Often following him on the program was the legendary blind street musician, Louis “Moondog” Hardin, by most accounts a sweet and gracious man. When he mounted the stage after Tiny, Moondog reportedly muttered curses about the travesty that had just preceded him.

Roy Silver, another ex-manager (there were many; Tiny was notorious for signing conflicting contracts), recalled, “when he performed, people were always yelling things like ‘Get off, you fruit!’ There was always the danger that some lug would run up and attack him. They simply didn’t want to accept him as a performer.”

Tiny was philosophical: “They’re only laughing. People have been laughing at me my whole life.”

While struggling on the Village circuit, he waxed a commercial 45 for the blue Cat label in 1965. It fizzled. Meanwhile at a midtown Manhattan storefront studio, Tiny cut countless one-off acetates written and recorded for--and given away to--a succession of darling damsels as tokens of admiration. “Hello, wonderful, lovely Miss Snooky,” the opening groove would warble, “This is Tiny Tim. You are soooo beautiful. And that’s why I composed this song for you.” He hung with combative comedian Lenny Bruce. “We were both very romantic,” he told Goblin magazine’s Wesley Joost. “We liked to talk about girls a lot.”

Besides the ladies, Tiny was obsessed with cleanliness--doubtless as an adjunct to godliness. His commitment to Jesus ran deep; he had a penchant for peppering his conversation with “ThankGodtoChrist.”

Gigs at a lesbian club called Page Three and at Steve Paul’s Scene sustained him, barely, while Tiny was mistaken for just another hapless freak strumming an acoustic stringed instrument. His big break came in August 1967, when Warner Bros. Records impresario Mo Ostin discovered the tousled apparition trilling away at the Scene, and offered him a contract.

Tiny Tim was just the act “Mr. Sinatra’s Reprise Records” had been waiting for. They ushered Tiny, carrying his uke in a brown paper bag, into the studio; he stood before the mic, leaned back, opened wide, and released “the spirits of the singers who are living within me.” Out flowed forgotten songs, sung in forgotten styles, in anything but a forgettable way. Tiny seemed to have memorized every Tin Pan Alley chestnut written between 1900 and 1945. If you’re gonna preach, you gotta know the Bible.

God Bless Tiny Tim, the first album, was released in May 1968. Dogs liked Tiny’s high notes; ships lost in the fog sought harbor in the low ones. The LP was produced by Richard Perry (who later worked with Carly Simon, Barbra Streisand, and Harry Nilsson, among countless others). God Bless is a bit like Harpo Marx’s trenchcoat--you never knew what surprises lurked in all the hidden pockets. Spoken word narratives segued into rock ‘n’ roll, which jostled melodic cobwebs (the pre-World War I “On the Old Front Porch”) and contemporary offerings (“Fill Your Heart,” by then-upcoming writers Paul Williams and Biff Rose). Tiny could deliver both parts of dialogue in songs like “I Got You Babe,” alternating between his “sissy” falsetto and “macho” baritone. And, of course, the LP contained what would prove Tiny’s trademark for life--”Tip-Toe Thru’ the Tulips,” a rusty 1929 pump that miraculously spewed a royalty stream through a culvert that had been dry for decades.

When Tiny became a regular on Laugh-In in 1968, he attracted the curiosity of reporters and gossip columnists, who found him good copy. He also became a “top 10 guest”--appearing with regularity every seven weeks or so--on the Tonight Show, where Jonny Carson was beguiled by Tiny’s childlike candor. It was during this period that the nation discovered the depths of his weirdness: five showers a day; refusing to eat in the presence others; a fortune spent on cosmetics; his sincere belief that aliens lived under the surface of the moon.

He awarded an annual trophy to the prettiest “classic” he’d met that year (these relationships were largely platonic). In conversation, he would spell, rather than utter, any world that was remotely risqué, including b-o-d-y and b-e-d. He volunteered to clean women’s apartments--washed floors, vacuumed--just to be near them, content in the role of d-o-o-r-m-a-t.

But Tiny Tim was a history teacher masquerading as a buffoon. Predating by years of musical grave-robbing antics of Michael Feinstein, he reclaimed obscure relics from the songbooks of Bing Crosby, Rudy Vallee, and Irving Kaufman, and restored their vitality. He didn’t just know these songs--he was familiar with encyclopedic details about them. Regarding “My Dreams Are Getting Better All the Time,” from Tiny Tim’s Second Album, he knew--who doesn’t?--that it was a big hit for Johnny Long in 1945. But how many were aware, as Tiny told interviewer Ernie Clark in 1995, that “Long was the only left-handed violinist in popular music at the time”?

Speaking of hands, in 1969, crafty 17-year-old Victoria May Budinger offered Tiny hers in marriage. To assure everyone she was serious, “Miss Vicky” wed Tim on the Tonight Show, with 40 million witnesses. It was one of the highest-rated TV shows and biggest journalistic events of 1969--some fogies may recall we also landed on the moon that year.

Tiny was selling records (200,000 copies of God Bless), boosting network ad rates, and playing the most coveted showcases in the biz. He commanded bucking all musical trends in New York clubs at a plate-of-falafel pay scale, it must’ve seemed like a dream.

It was. And soon enough, it was over.

In short order, Tiny was divorced, remaindered, and bankrupt. Even the Tonight Show lost interest. Redefining “pathetic,” Tiny was demoted back to carny culture, touring in a circus sideshow. And that was it.

Except for one thing: Nobody told him it was over.

Tiny continued to plug away, albeit on the fringes. He traveled alone and hired local, usually non-AFM players for backup. His bookings included urine-stenched clubs in Greyhound-circuit towns where a half-dozen drunken patrons would taunt him--but a few admiring fans (known as “Tinyheads”) might also turn up to bask in what they considered a genius. County fairs, hotel lounges, riverboats--his compulsion to entertain was unquenchable. His perseverance earned him much respect from those who appreciate talented, neglected performers who circulate in the margins.

He was adventurous enough to work with younger artists in a variety of styles. These newcomers--musicians and producers--admired Tiny, and sought not to exploit him, but rather to help him exploit his talents. His appeal was cross-generational. Journalist Dawn Eden referred to Tiny’s “eternal hipness.” Spin noted that eh “was post-rock when post-rock wasn’t cool.”

While he continued to retrieve pearls from the heyday of megaphone singers, Tiny indulged in modern genre-surfing, including heavy metal, rap, and disco. He explored Brave Combo’s faux world music, Pink Floyd anthems, and Eugene Chadbourne’s funhouse freakery. But through it all, he was unmistakably Tiny.

Brother Cleve (keyboardist of Combustible Edison) was hired in 1983 to back Tiny at the Rat, one of Boston’s seediest punk dives. “He was traveling with a teenage girl--definitely jailbait--and a comic book-styled ‘sleazy’ manager, complete with pencil-thin mustache and greasy hair,” recalled Cleve. “Tiny was the kindest, sweetest, most clueless idiot savant I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. He played songs that none of us knew, in keys we couldn’t deduce. He’d absorbed this incredible backlog of songs, but had no idea how to give directions to other musicians, except to say, ‘When I spin my hand like this, play faster.’ He had a peculiar concept of rhythm, and would change chords out of meter, without warning. I guess that’s the result of decades of solo gigs. Yet he was unarguably one-of-a-kind, a performer whose faults became his charms.”

His appeal to a new generation--and the devotion of his long-suffering loyalists--resuscitated Tiny from the career doldrums. He released more new albums from 1987 through 1997 than in all preceding decades combined. His audience may have been smaller than that of Laugh-In’s, but it was more faithful and more appreciative.

He still rendered the classics: Tiptoe Through [sic] the Tulips/Resurrection (Bear Family, 1987) and Prisoner of Love: A Tribute to Russ Columbo (Vinyl Retentive, 1995); but he also sustained his Tod Browning aura: Songs of an Impotent Troubadour (Durtro, 1995) featured a beer-besotted Tim raconteuring and wailing tunes he composed for Tuesday Weld, Elizabeth Taylor, and Jessica Hahn (“Jim Bakker came in your room / Who knows where or when / But when he left your lovin’ arms / He sure was born again”).

Ever ready for adventure, Tiny would hitch a ride on any musical bandwagon. Coming full circle from his 1968 God Bless debut, I Love Me (Ponk/Seeland, 1995) displayed an array of styles. It showcased Tiny’s versatility with solo uke toss-offs, rockers, disco, cocktail jazz, and the obligatory “Tulips” song (“I Saw Mr. Presley Tip-toeing through the Tulips”). A 6:48-long “Depression Medley” featured Tiny’s acoustic recordings hotwired into noise-art by Shockabilly sound skronker Eugene Chadbourne.

“Once [Tiny’s] in a studio,” explained album engineer Pink Bob, “if you shove the occasional food and fruit juice through the door, he’ll never leave. He performs to the microphone as if it were a crowd f 100,000 fans.”

Girl (Rounder, 1996), recorded with Brave Combo, gelled beautifully. The Combo had obvious respect for Tiny as a song stylist and never upstaged his vocals. The arrangements were tasteful, with horns galore, as Tiny tackled the Beatles (“Hey, Jude,” “Girl”), antique song craft (“Over the Rainbow,” “Stardust”), and a new song (“Fourteen”) written by his fan club president, James “Big Bucks” Burnett. “Stairway to Heaven” got a long overdue revamp: Tim and the Combo retooled the Led Zep leviathan as a jump-jazz finger-snapper for gimlet-eyed lounge lizards.

Also recommended for completists: the Endless Discussion fan club tapes, in which Tiny speculated on the possibilities of extraterrestrial life.

Despite his one-shot popularity pinnacle and long-loyal following, Tiny never inspired copycats. There was no uke revival; pancake makeup futures didn’t register an uptick. His fans seemed content to sit back and enjoy the spectacle without any compulsion to emulate. The main reason, of course, is that Tiny Tim was uncopyable. “Originality” never had a more visible poster child.

One quality that distinguished tiny Tim from legions of outsiders was his professionalism. He was smooth, poised. He could work an audience with great confidence. He was comfortable onstage, always in control of his performance. This didn’t make him any less of an outsider; the element of the freak show was always part of the spectacle. Yet, Tiny once asserted, “I do not consider myself an entertainer. I consider myself more of a songplugger, trying to sell the song and the artist.”

His death couldn’t have been more poetic: performing on uke before the Woman’s Club of Minneapolis on November 30, 1996, tiny suffered a heart attack. His third wife, Miss Sue (Susan Gardner Khaury), helped him back to their table, where the 64-year-old singer collapsed and expired. “I don’t think he had time to feel pain,” said Susan. “He died singing “Tip-Toe Thru’ the Tulips,’ the last thing he heard was the applause, and the last thing he saw was me.” Judging from her professions of love on her Web site, Sue really loved the guy--in all the right ways. Tiny was very lucky to have found her, and it’s a tearjerker that he only lived long enough to enjoy 14 months of such wedded bliss.

After the troubadour’s death, J. R. Taylor wrote the following haiku in the New York Press:

God, why Tiny Tim?
He could still hit the high notes
Unlike Robert Plant

Journalist Mykel Board observed, “Tiny Tim was a tragic figure. Both in his personal suffering--imagine living as a “joke”--and untimely death, but more so as a loss to music history. He was a great repository of clever, slightly naughty songs from an innocent America. His death was like the burning of at great library.”

He took that library with him. But he was looking forward to the afterlife. Tiny mused in 1975: “I dream that in the next world I’ll be able to be with all the women I want. I don’t want men around, except maybe my poor father, and Al Jolson. I will own them, all these beautiful creatures who never get old, and do whatever I want with them. There will be no body odor, and making l-o-v-e will be like it was in the Garden of Eden before the fall. I will never get tired, and my s-e-e-d will flow out for hours, like water out of a hose, in a stream of ecstasy.”

ThankGodtoChrist

Ebert: Thanks for this, Steinbolt1. The Tiny Tim post stirred a lot of interest.

I am following up on a comment of mine not yet posted, duh. Can't help but think there are minds floating around here that well remember Tiny Tim from the 60's. Hell, there are old fart bloggers galore. How could they forget the guy? He was huge, a 60's legend.

I am fairly cognizant of the Herbert Khoury story. What luck discovering him early, Roger. Even if many of us in later years kidded around-even outrageously- with his outrageous persona, I recall it mostly being done in good humor. Carsonesque, if you will. I just hope Mr. K.(Tiny) appreciated his audience, and took satisfaction in his later years knowing all the pleasure he provided folks during a most tumultuous period. Although I personally found more than my fair share, fun times were hard to come by for many back then. Yet, don't remember anyone who didn't enjoy Tiny's shtick. Maybe it's our nature to remember, exaggerate the good times and downplay, obfuscate the bad. Maybe, as Dylan wrote, the past and the future are both illusory. Hell I don't anymore, but bet I'm still gonna smile, at least a smidgen, every time I think of Tiny Tim, Miss Vicki, or hear a ukulele.

*archives.gov/research/vietnam-war

I've learned a lot about Tiny Tim from you and Steinbolt1, Roger, and thanks to you both. I would just like to clarify that the ONLY Beatles album Tim performed on was The Beatles Christmas Album, available officially only to fan club members in the Sixties, but bootleg copies abound. I can't say I prefer Tim's version of "Nowhere Man" to the original; sorry.

(Those seeking out The Beatles Christmas Album should be aware that it's mainly a comedy record, not a collection of songs. Very bizarre, and reveals a hidden side of the boys and their love for the Goon Show.)

I had remembered Tiny having a life long crush on Elizabeth Taylor. Checked it out. All true. They were the same age. I found this which he wrote and submitted in the late 40s'>

"You come like a star that shines in the blue.
You're like a rose sprinkled in dew.
Eyes that gleam like glittering gold.
And a heart neither harsh nor bold.

You're all of nature by itself
Talent and beauty is your wealth
Like a heavenly angel on a beam
I can't believe you aren't a dream.

So just be good and just be kind
And peace and happiness may you find
Sometime when your thoughts are free
WON'T YOU KINDLY THINK OF ME."

Tiny never forgot. He recited his poem/song on the 1995 album, TALES OF AN IMPOTENT TROUBADOUR.

And, by all reports, Liz has always thought kindly of Tiny Tim.

songpoemmusic.com

I met Tim in the early 70's at a tv station where I was working. He was a gentleman and we talked about a common friend. I felt that he was serious about his music. He was very friendly and an all around nice guy. He was a real guy.

Thank you for writing this. When I first heard Tiny Tim it was as a fan of novelty songs and Dr. Demento. I only heard "Tiptoe," but when I later started reading about him I became more interested in his music and eventually bought a Japanese CD of his first album, God Bless Tiny Tim. It still stands as one of my all-time favorite albums of the 60s. It's frustrating to know that he was ridiculously talented, but was only able to become famous because of his eccentricities. If smarter people were handling his career, he could have been making great albums and making a decent living off his music for a longer stretch of time, like Frank Zappa and other talented oddballs who know their niche and how to have continued success in it. One of the most depressing sights was Tiny Tim on a Howard Stern New Year's Eve special, singing a song while text scrolled underneath with a phone number and saying that he was available for birthday parties and bar mitzvahs. The man really deserved better than that.

Does anyone have any information about Tiny Tim performing at a tulip festival in Western Canada or in Holland, Michigan? I have some wooden shoes that are inscribed to him and am wondering the authenticity.

Oh, yes. Thank you. What a dear, dear man he was.

It was probably the late eighties when I met Tiny. I was driving a cab at night in Manchester, NH. The other cabbies would get celebrities like Tanya Tucker in their cabs... I could only laugh at my luck when Tiny got in with his "manager" and introduced himself. We spent an hour or so on a dark, rainy, miserable winter night going from one drugstore chain to another, looking for a particular facial creme that he claimed "Deanna Durbin used". He didn't find it, and eventually I brought them back to their hotel. I told Tiny I was an aspiring musician with some gigging under my belt and we talked about the business on the way. I found Tiny to be very kind and encouraging, very willing to share of his knowledge, just a very decent and inclusive human being and not at all like the stage persona he brought to the Tonight show. It was a little like bringing a little old lady on a shopping trip though... he was quite apprehensive of the puddles and adamant that I not park near them.

It's too bad Tiny didn't live to see the resurgence of the ukelele going on these days on YouTube and the web in general... he'd have loved it, and maybe could have died in front of a bigger crowd. Tiny would have liked that. ;)

Howdy! Could hardly concur more though i might most likely make a further traditional strategy. Whenever producing tunes or simply creating you want to ensure the ambiance is appropriate. Illumination a couple of wax lights will help much as well as making sure no person is hungry. Getting hungry can affect the atmosphere as well as the quality very much. Anyhow, wish to be able to discover more articles or blog posts in this way. Cheers, Chris J

-One of the most depressing sights was Tiny Tim on a Howard Stern New Year's Eve special, singing a song while text scrolled underneath with a phone number and saying that he was available for birthday parties and bar mitzvahs. The man really deserved better than that.-

I take a bit of exception to this comment. Tiny was not ashamed to perform at such events...they were in no way demeaning to him. Sure, I agree that he "deserved" more acclaim, but you have to understand that the man was very happy to be doing what he was put here to be doing, even at events that others may have felt were "beneath" him. No reason to pity a man who was happily making an honest dollar, even if it was only a few of them, while playing to only a few.

My path and Tiny's first crossed in the early 80's in Toledo, Ohio. I sought him out for an interview which would run on a 100,000 subscriber cable system. That meeting led to a wonderful friendship that spanned the next 10 years.

One of the funniest memories I have of time we spent together occurred during one of his return trips to Toledo. He enjoyed shopping and he particularly loved shopping for cosmetics.

Our destination was one of the early 'big box' cosmetic coliseums in the region- the kind of place Tiny had visited only in his dreams. As we entered the store Tiny pulled from his pant pocket a large orange plastic prescription bottle containing money ($950+) earmarked to pay rent at his Olcott Hotel suite in NYC.

"This is my rent. No matter what, don't let me spend more than $50.00," he said.

With that, we began an almost hour long expedition up and down each aisle in the establishment. Every few feet Tiny would stop, examine the selection, read the label of several products and make his choice while I kept a running total of the cart's contents.

As we turned the corner of the last aisle Tiny spotted a display of facial creams ballyhooing the restorative properties of collagen. He grabbed a jar from the shelf and scanned the contents mumbling each item half out loud until he reached an unfamiliar ingredient.

Turning the label towards me he pointed to the unknown word which I identified as placenta. With a quizzical look on his face he asked, "What's that?" Surprised by his question I answered, "Afterbirth."

That answer literally shook him and almost jolted the jar from his hand like a red hot poker had stabbed him in the palm. He made a beeline for the cashier and we were on our way.

I knew he'd been a big fan of cosmetics. But from that day forward I believe he looked at them through very different eyes.

"The higher you go, the more your bottom shows!"
Tiny Tim [1932-1996]

I worked with Mr. Tim in 1987 when he was with the Great American Circus.
He was a treasure of melodies. His second wife Miss Jan never seems to be mentioned. She was by his side and very concerned for his health.
Mr. Tim took me under his wing and when him and Miss Jan where married on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno (October 31, 1994) my daughter was the flower girl. I was on stage with them as he always treated me like family.
Ahh the tales I could tell.
He was a gentleman, an incredible person, who changed my life.
Thank you Roger for telling Tiny Tim's story.