GLOBAL WARMING (circa 1969) with Tiny Tim and THE ICECAPS ARE MELTING Tiny Tim was born in Manhattan, New York City, New York, the son of a Polish Jewish mother, Tillie (née Staff), a garment worker, and a Lebanese Catholic father, Butros Khaury, a textile worker. He displayed musical talent at a very young age. In a 1968 interview on The Tonight Show, he described the discovery of his ability to sing in an upper register in 1952: I was listening to the radio and singing along as I was singing I said Gee, its strange. I can go up high as well. He then entered a local talent show and sang You Are My Sunshine in his newly discovered falsetto. He started using the stage name Tiny Tim in 1962 when his manager at the time, George King, booked him at a club that favored acts by performers short in stature. Tiny Tim appeared in Jack Smiths Normal Love, as well as the independent feature film You Are What You Eat in which he sang the Ronettes song, Be My Baby in his falsetto range; also featured was a rendition of Sonny and Chers I Got You Babe, with Tim singing the Cher parts in his falsetto voice, along with Eleanor Barooshian singing Sonny Bonos baritone part. These tracks were recorded with musicians who would later go on to be in The Band. The latter performance led to a booking on the massively popular Rowan and Martins Laugh-In, an American television comedy-variety show. Co-host Dan Rowan announced that Laugh-In believed in showcasing new talent, and introduced Tiny Tim. The singer entered carrying a shopping bag, pulled his soprano ukulele from it, and sang a medley of A Tisket A Tasket and On The Good Ship Lollipop as an apparently dumbfounded co-host Dick Martin watched. In his third performance on Laugh-In, Tiny Tim entered, blowing kisses, preceded by an elaborate procession of the cast, and after a short interview, sang Tiptoe Through the Tulips. In 1968, his first album, God Bless Tiny Tim, was released. It contained an orchestrated version of Tiptoe Through the Tulips, which became a hit after being released as a single. For All My Little Friends, 1969, a collection of childrens songs was nominated for a Grammy Award. On December 17, 1969, with 40 million viewers watching, Tiny Tim married Victoria Mae Budinger (aka Miss Vicki) on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. A daughter, Tulip Victoria, was born in 1971. During their marriage, Tiny Tim and Miss Vicki mostly lived apart, and divorced eight years later in 1977. He then subsequently married Jan Alweiss (1984) and Susan Marie Gardner (1995). When Tiny Tim first became well-known to the American public, pundits and journalists debated whether or not this character being presented was just an orchestrated act, or the real thing. It quickly became clear that he was genuine, however, and that he could probably be best described as a lonely outcast intoxicated by fame and a romantic always in pursuit of his ideal dream. In September 1996, he suffered a heart attack just as he began singing at a ukulele festival at the Montague Grange Hall (often confused in accounts of the incident with the nearby Montague Bookmill, at which he had recorded a video interview earlier that same day) in Montague, Massachusetts. He was hospitalized at the nearby Franklin County Medical Center in Greenfield for approximately three weeks, before being discharged with strong admonitions not to perform again because of his health and the dietary needs for his diabetic and heart conditions. Nevertheless, he ignored the advice. While playing at a gala benefit at The Womans Club of Minneapolis on November 30, he had a second heart attack on stage and he later died at the Hennepin County Medical Center.[ His remains are entombed in a mausoleum in Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis.
Posted on: Fri, 23 May 2014 18:41:26 +0000
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