Description
Antique-ballad crooner, falsetto warbler, 20th century Victorian gallant—many considered him a hapless freak, or a comedy writer’s recurring one-liner on TV’s Laugh-In. In fact, Tiny Tim (b. Herbert Khaury, 1932, New York) was a walking, ukulele-plucking Smithsonian of American popular song. Renowned for his all-too-genuine eccentricities—five showers a day, cosmetic overload, a mane of cascading spaghetti, carnival barker duds—Tiny was nonetheless a classy interpreter of sophisticated songcraft.
A reclusive childhood spent obsessing over Russ Colombo and Rudy Vallee 78’s paid rich dividends in the late 1960s, as Tiny became a worldwide TV star, Billboard chart-climber, and Vegas headliner. But when the public grew weary of “Tip-Toe Thru the Tulips,” Tiny was exiled to county fairs and seedy pubs. Yet he never gave up doing what he loved, releasing more albums in the last decade of his life than in all the preceding years. He died November 30, 1996, of a heart attack at the Women’s Club of Minneapolis after regaling an audience of charmed matrons.