Tiny Tim

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Tiny Tim around 1988

Tiny Tim (a pseudonym after a character from Charles Dickens ' A Christmas Carol ), real name Herbert Buckingham Khaury , (born April 12, 1932 in Manhattan , New York City , † November 30, 1996 in Hennepin County , Minnesota ) was a US American pop musician and entertainer . He is considered to be one of the most colorful , bizarre and at the same time obscure figures in pop history.

biography

Herbert Buckingham Khaury was born in New York to the Lebanese Butros Hanna Khaury († 1971) and the Polish Tillie Staff (1893-1986). Little is known about his childhood. Apparently he started very early to powder his face pale, put on red cheeks and let his hair grow long. This gave it a rather exotic appearance for the 1940s and 1950s. From 1951 to 1952 he worked as a messenger ( messenger ) for Loew's based in New York City.

His contemporaries were particularly impressed by his enormous musical knowledge. After singing something to passengers on the subway under the names Julian Foxglove, Larry Love or Derry Dover, accompanying himself on the ukulele , Tiny Tim was finally a fixture in the US subculture in the 1960s and at the latest after his appearance at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970, it was also widely known in Europe.

He made headlines in 1970 when he married Victoria Mae Budinger, then 17, called Miss Vicky, in front of the TV cameras. The marriage gave birth to a daughter named Tulip, which he named after his only single hit Tiptoe Through The Tulips ; in the version by Ilja Richter under the title “ Tip Tap in die Tulips ”). In 1977, shortly after his divorce, he married Jan Alweiss. That second connection didn't last long, however, and Tiny Tim's fame also waned during that time. He suffered from alcoholism and diabetes . After a comeback in 1988 he got more creative again and made new studio recordings, which were not released until 1995. Meanwhile, he married his third wife, Sue Gardner.

For decades, Khaury was considered to be the curator of US music from the late 1980s to the 1990s and possessed a pronounced eidetic memory , which enabled him to link countless dates with lived events. Tim also appeared occasionally as an actor in film and television. In 1987 he was seen in the horror film Blood Harvest .

In late 1996, Tiny Tim died of cardiac arrest after a previous heart attack . Photos showed the entertainer in the coffin with his ukulele, which was given to him in the grave.

Image and musical creation

In addition to his voice, which varied between falsetto soprano and baritone , his extraordinary physiognomy was striking . He was 1.85 m tall and slender, but quite plump as he got older, and mostly wore suits that were a little too small and very tight.

Initially, he musically followed the tradition of vaudeville and revue singing , but also picked up on popular pop hits of his time, for which he accompanied himself on his ukulele. From around the mid-1970s, with increasing fame, he developed his style in the direction of pop and glam rock . The song he covered, Living in the Sunlight, Lovin 'in the Moonlight , was used for the first episode ( help wanted ) of the SpongeBob SquarePants series. Also found Tip Toe through the Tulips in the movie Insidious use.

Discography

Chart positions
Explanation of the data
Albums
God Bless Tiny Tim
  US 7th 07/13/1968 (32 weeks)
Singles
Tip-Toe Thru 'The Tulips With Me
  US 17th 05/18/1968 (9 weeks)
Bring Back Those Rockabye Baby Days
  US 95 08/24/1968 (2 weeks)
Great balls of fire
  UK 45 02/08/1969 (1 week)
  US 85 02/08/1969 (3 weeks)
  • April Showers. (1966)
  • God Bless Tiny Tim. (1968)
  • Tiny Tim's Second Album. (1968)
  • Tip Toe Through The Tulips With Me. (1968)
  • The Beatles' 1968 Christmas Record (1968)
  • For All My Little Friends. (1969)
  • The Eternal Troubadour. (1986)
  • Tiny rock. (1992)
  • Song Of An Impotent Troubadour. (1994)
  • Girl. (1996)
  • Tiny Tim's Christmas Album (1996)

Web links

Commons : Tiny Tim  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
swell

Individual evidence

  1. a b Chart sources: UK US