Fun facts to know and tell about Tiny Tim:
One, he never uses cloth towels — bath or otherwise — disposable paper only, even in hotels. He can give you 30 minutes on the relative merits of the commercial brands. His choice, if he can get it: Bounty Microwave or Job Squad — “who needs silk?”
Two, he brushes his teeth four times a day with his own unique combination of three toothpastes — Crest, Gleem and Macleans — and goes no place without his Butler gum pick. (“And thank the good Lord for Plax.”)
Three, he cleanses his skin eight times a day and liberally applies Nivea Night Creme and European Collagen Complex to the applicable parts.
Four, he thanks God — repeatedly — and Revlon — often — for who is he today.
And just think, he doesn’t get paid for endorsements.
— Close your eyes and he’s a Brooklyn businessman.
Open them and, well, the polite response is, he’s not.
Not Robert Redford, not Rudy Vallee — though he’d like to be both — and not a Brooklyn businessman.
He had 15 minutes of fame 20 years ago.
You remember, surely you were one of the 45 million who caught his marriage to the 17-year-old Miss Vicki in 1969 on The Tonight Show. Tiny, far and away the most successful novelty act of the ’60s, rocketed to international celebrity after an appearance on the counter-establishment Laugh-In and the very establishment Carson show. He did it with one song, Tiptoe Through the Tulips.
Then he faded away.
It is better, he says, to have had fame than not. But the not part is a little rough.
Tiny Tim at 57.
He’s not so tiny really, but — what the heck — let a man have his illusions. He is also a little tattered, though nonetheless soulful and sweet. Lawdy-be, he’s sweet.
And he’s back. Never left, really, hanging out there on the fringe, doing what he did when he was getting started — playing to small crowds wherever they’ll have him. And while he’s graduated from gay bars and freak shows and street corners, he’ll do a prison now and again, sometimes he’ll do a dive.
Last week, he did a four-stop swing through Florida — the Holiday Inn in Palm Beach Gardens, a Wellington club (where Merv Griffin was supposed to show), a Stuart tavern and Lake Worth’s Sons of Italy Lodge.
He has just completed a new country-and-western album, Leave Me Satisfied, produced in a genuine suburb of Nashville. It will be released nationally in late May. His single — also titled Leave Me Satisfied — was released early and is currently No. 85 (with a bullet) on the country charts.
His South Florida promoters wanted to milk that for all it’s worth and, inexplicably, struck upon the notion of having him say he’s running for president. It was news to Tiny, who expressed some lingering doubts. He’d prefer to be billed, humbly, as “the Eternal Troubador and the Ambassador of Song.” But Tiny went along. Heck, he even went along when they introduced him to his opening act. “He scares me,” says Tiny, of the Nick Tortelli clone.
“I need a lot of prayer to get through it all,” the man with the long, less-than-luscious locks confides as he rolls his eyes heavenward — not around, just straight back into his head.
For a brief second, you believe it is grievously sad — to once have been the toast of the continent and now, unable to pack a room at a suburban Holiday Inn.
Then, you realize that — bless him — he is genuinely amused at where he finds himself, going along for the ride as if this is someone else’s life.
Have Butler gum pick, will travel.
— Tiny Tim sits in the bar of the Holiday Inn in Palm Beach Gardens, making a rather bold, if uncertain, fashion statement.
He’s donned well-worn blue cotton slacks, a light blue polyester tuxedo jacket — with dark blue velvet lapels, silver Adidas that have seen better days, a white embroidered cowboy shirt with pearl snaps and a black-and-white tie that he tucks into the top of his pants. His very visible socks — the blue cotton slacks are a little high-water — are white. And his Butler gum pick is the lone rider in the cowboy shirt’s right breast pocket.
He carries his trusty ukulele in a purple Sasson bag and a Defenders of the Earth plastic wallet in his back pocket.
“Some of the best things in life cost just $2.”
He is eccentricity incarnate — if it could be incarnate.
That is, until he opens his mouth and deep, wonderful, quiet tones come out. He really sounds rhapsodic, almost like an old phonograph, complete with tinny monophonic audio. And he’ll tell you — in that great New York accent that begins sentences with “dah-ling” — just about anything. About his quirks, about his sex life, about his music.
The latter — sad to say maybe — is the most interesting.
Tiny Tim, truth be told, is not a one-song bird — though he is mightily beaked. No, Tim is more than falsetto and flash-in-the-pan. He knows music. Not all music, just everything from Stephen Foster on.
His repertoire includes 2,000 songs and they are accessible at the drop of a hint. He will, for example, spontaneously break into tune, any tune. You’ll be talking about a certain time period and music is quite simply his sole frame of reference.
No, he doesn’t remember the president that year, who won the pennant or the price of eggs — he remembers songs, when they were issued, by what publisher, how much they cost him and how far they went on the charts.
He picks up his ukulele and belts out, Borscht Belt style — “Rudy Vallee, 1919, I’m Just a Vagabond Lover.” He then runs off a few refrains and, in mid-single-finger strum, picks up the conversation where it left off.
His finances: OK; his and Miss Vicki’s estranged 17-year-old daughter, Tulip: living in a foster home, having recently had a regrettable abortion two years ago; his “has-been” status: “I accept it.” And did you know that in 1982, “I offered a woman money to marry me?”
Don’t worry about hurting his feelings, he’ll do it for you. In the course of a three-hour conversation, he calls himself, in turn, “a freak,” “a pervert,” “an ugly duckling,” “a weirdo” and “admittedly different.”
Tiny, Tiny, Tiny.
“Sure it hurts. I still feel pain.”
You’re buying this stuff until up comes a middle-aged guy to say, “Excuse me. My wife and I have all your albums. Could I get your autograph?”
Tiny is eagerly solicitous. “Fine, fine. Thank you, sir. To whom should I address this?” He then scribbles a personal greeting — To Bob — and affixes the name that made Herbert Buckingham Khaury famous. (Though later he admits that, given a choice, he’d have made it big under the name Larry Love.)
This autograph ritual repeats itself four or five more times.
Then a beautiful woman makes herself heard above the din. “Tim, you dated my roommate in 1967.”
Tim is perplexed but briefly. He then recounts her name, his date’s name, what she was wearing the day they met, the day they met and assorted other details of note.
What a memory, what a paradox.
“Yes, yes,” he whispers, “a beautiful girl.” The “beautiful” gets lovingly drawn out — “beau-ti-fulllll” — and his eyes again search out his forehead. Mock mesmerization.
Tim, you see, is a flaming heterosexual. He is enamored of all women, any kind of youth and all brands of beauty. Vanna White is his current fantasy, though the woman — “Sue Something” — who just posed for the cover of his new album puts his eyes in another quest for the back of his head.
Old-fashioned, he will spell out the word sex but talk about it almost to the exclusion of all else. He will tell you how relationships are wonderful until that loving feeling is gone. How he’d trade his 15 minutes of fame for the late porn star John Holmes’ considerable endowments. And how he’d love to be a good lover, but alas.
Certain rules do indeed govern his affairs. The cardinal one: No sex without marriage — “better to marry unhappily 100 times than to live happily forever in sin.”
Understanding that tenet goes a long way in explaining his current predicament. Married a second time — the Miss Vicki ritual now a part of popular lore — his wife of four years is showing signs of disinterest. Tiny says he’s happily married, “but Miss Jan might give you a different story.”
Miss Jan, a 38-year-old graphic artist, and he live in separate New York City apartments. And it seems she wounds him daily. “She is hanging on for the cash-in, just in case I hit it big again.”
He tiptoes through nothing; he crashes in.
Gad, Tiny, what are people supposed to do with that kind of honesty?
Take it or leave it, it seems, though it is clear it no longer matters to Tiny that his career and his marriage run on with or without his help.
With or without his blessing.
With or without him.
