They dealt in a currency of memories and artefacts. Most were twice my age and had known Tiny personally in some capacity. Much of their activity was centered around one super-fan, the late Ernie Clark, then webmaster at tribute website tinytim. In , by then a junior in college, I decided to write about Tiny, and make the case as to why he deserved more than a footnote in the annals of American pop culture.
He was easy to reach and friendly. Others on the hit list, however, proved elusive - and some hostile. Though I did not get everyone on my list, persistence paid off and and, between and , I conducted over interviews with Tiny's friends and associates including his first wife, Miss Vicki, and his widow, Miss Sue.
Though he was often shockingly forthright about his personal habits and sex life, he also routinely contradicted himself on a wide variety of topics.
I kept digging. Sure, there were rumours that Penn Jillette had one of the later books. In total, Joe Jr. Tiny had filled the ledgers and margins of accounting books with his thoughts, and I filled my own notebooks with new insights. Thusly the scope of my project was transformed. Reading his words, I cannot help but feel as though they were written for someone to find, to remember his incredible career, and write his book.
Justin Martell is an independent filmmaker and writer. Alanna Wray McDonald is a poet, writer and freelance art director for film and television. The son of a Lebanese father and Jewish mother, the young Khaury grew up in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan.
A high school dropout, his interest in the popular music of the s through the s manifested itself early, and his dream was to become a singer. He learned to play guitar and ukulele and began performing professionally as "Larry Love" in the early s, making his debut at a lesbian cabaret in Greenwich Village called Page 3, where he became a regular. Though his parents tried to discourage him, Khaury continued to publicly perform the early mass culture American music that he so loved and collected on 78 records, at small clubs, parties and talent shows under a variety of names.
Khaury had established himself as a cult performer in the Greenwich Village music scene by the early s, singing under the name that he would become famous for, that of the crippled lad in Charles Dickens ' novel "A Christmas Carol" allegedly the stage name was suggested by a manager who used to work with midgets; Khaury himself stood an inch over six feet, but the name helped to reinforce his bizarre persona. He was an instant sensation and his career was made.
His weird appearance and act he evinced the polite manners of a bygone era, which stood out in stark contrast to the "Let it All Hang Out! Tiny Tim appeared several more times on "Laugh-In" but became better known through his frequent guest spots on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson , where audiences were bemused by his eccentric personality.
He signed with Frank Sinatra 's record label Reprise and issued his debut album, "God Bless Tiny Tim," in , featuring what became his signature song, a falsetto cover of "Tip-Toe Through the Tulips.
He followed it up before the year was out with the ingeniously entitled "Tiny Tim's Second Album. The couple mostly lived apart as Tim did with his two later wives , and while the union produced a daughter, inevitably named Tulip, he and Miss Vicki divorced after eight years of marriage. Tiny Tim performed around the country in , enjoying some highly lucrative gigs in Las Vegas, but his business associates fleeced him.
A one-trick pony, his popularity began to wane in the early s and the lucrative bookings and TV appearances became a thing of the past. A trouper, Tiny Tim kept performing, eventually traveling the country playing community centers, high school theaters and other less-than-prestigious venues as part of Roy Radin 's Vaudeville Revue with the likes of The Five Harmonica Rascals.
He continued to record throughout the s and s for small labels, but he never again achieved any real success. After the Roy Radin Revue, Tim kept on performing. He even joined a circus for its week schedule. In the late s he moved to Des Moines, Iowa, and managed a small comeback of sorts in the mid-'90s, when he appeared on Howard Stern 's radio show. However, his comeback suffered a setback after he had a heart attack performing at a ukulele festival in September of After getting out of the hospital, Tiny Tim the trouper resumed his concert schedule.
The schedule proved too taxing, and on November 30 he suffered another heart attack while performing "Tip-Toe Through the Tulips" in Minneapolis, and died an hour later. He was 64 years old. Sign In. Edit Tiny Tim. Showing all 38 items. Listening to God Bless Tiny Tim more than 50 years later, it sounds surprisingly strong—some bogus psychedelia notwithstanding. Perry clearly had the magic touch and managed to bring out the best in Tiny Tim.
What the hell was that? All of a sudden he was everywhere—in magazines, on TV Johnny Carson, host of the massively popular Tonight Sho w, gave him tremendous exposure, and of course he appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show , and even on the radio, where he had both novelty appeal and a surprising amount of hip cachet. Sometimes on the road he enlisted a pickup band or orchestra, but often he worked alone, with just his ukulele.
Unfortunately, Tiny Tim was never able recapture the mojo of this initial starburst. Tiny was the first to admit that by the end of , his career was on the skids. He always considered himself blessed to have had the career he had and to have met so many of his heroes—particularly the singers he idolized, from Nick Lucas to Bing Crosby to Irving Kaufman.
The end of the Tiny Tim saga came in the fall of First, he suffered a heart attack while performing at a ukulele festival in Massachusetts and was hospitalized for three weeks. He died before midnight that night. Did it take a step back because it became a jokey, novelty prop? I put the legacy question to a couple of veteran uke players and aficionados who are also experts in the early 20th century music that Tiny Tim adored and championed until his last breath.
Very few people were aware of his encyclopedic knowledge of early American popular music. I played the ukulele in spite of him, not because of him. I feel his presence cast a shadow over the instrument, and with his passing the renaissance of the ukulele began.
Yes, he was definitely an eccentric character and that was no put-on, but his love for old recordings and performers from the first half of the 20th century was impressive indeed.
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