There Was No One Quite Like Tiny Tim

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In a world where anyone with an iPhone, internet access, and a little bit of luck can become a worldwide sensation, it's hard to illustrate just how wild it was that an individual like Tiny Tim became famous. Let’s not undercut just how much we need to emphasize the word “individual,” either, because there was no one quite like the man born Herbert Khaury - likely why he (briefly) became one of the most famous faces in pop culture.

In the official synopsis of Eternal Troubadour: The Improbable Life of Tiny Tim, there’s a portion which provides about as perfect a thumbnail sketch of Tiny Tim’s career as you’d ever need:

In 1968, after years of playing dive bars and lesbian cabarets on the Greenwich Village scene, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Bob Dylan and Lenny Bruce, the falsetto-voiced, ukulele-playing Tiny Tim landed a recording contract with Frank Sinatra’s Reprise label and an appearance on NBC’s Laugh-In. The resulting album, God Bless Tiny Tim, and its single, "Tip-Toe Thru’ the Tulips with Me," catapulted him to the highest levels of fame. Soon, Tiny was playing to huge audiences in the USA and Europe, while his marriage to the seventeen-year-old "Miss" Vicki was broadcast on The Tonight Show in front of an audience of fifty million.

Truly, Tiny Tim was a phenomenon.

As such, we’ve put together a collection of 10 tracks from Tiny Tim’s most commercially successful period – all of which were released as singles, believe it or not – but we’ve also added a bonus track just to show you how hard he could rock when he wanted to.

“Livin’ in the Sunlight, Lovin’ in the Moonlight” (1968)