Terry Gross: This is "Fresh Air," I'm Terry Gross. You're about to hear the results of a most unusual collaboration between Tiny Tim and Brave Combo. And you'll probably never think of Tiny Tim in quite the same way again. Most people who remember Tiny Tim write him off as an eccentric one-hit wonder. The hit was "Tiptoe Through the Tulips," which he warbled in his falsetto, accompanying himself on ukelele. In the late sixties he performed turn-of-the-century pop tunes on the TV series "Laugh-In" and married the woman he called Miss Vicki on the "Tonight Show." This new album on Rounder Records teams him up with Brave Combo, the Texas-based band that originated new-wave polkas. They've played loving but hilarious parodies of all sorts of rock, including transforming the Doors' "People are Strange" into a polka. And they play straight versions of all forms of American regional music. Later, we'll meet Tiny Tim. First we'll hear from Carl Finch, the leader and pianist of Brave Combo. From their collaboration called Girl, this is the Led Zeppelin song "Stairway to Heaven."
[Excerpt from "Stairway to Heaven"]
TG: Carl Finch, welcome to "Fresh Air."
Carl Finch: Thank you, Terry.
TG: I think that this is a brilliant arrangement. It is a kind of cheesy and cheerful lounge arrangement for perhaps the most pretentious rock ballad in history. Electric piano, the whole bit! How did you come up with this arrangement?
CF: Well, actually, a co-producer on the project, James "Big Bucks" Burnett is a massive Led Zeppelin fan and also knows Jimmy Page personally and thought it would be good to include this, and we ran it by Tiny and he had no objections, so we decided to include it. And we had been playing this song as an instrumental lounge song for many years before we did the record with Tiny. So we kind of had an arrangement in mind and just kind of flew with that.
TG: Now, has Jimmy Page heard it?
CF: Oh yeah, he's heard it and he's [laughs]-- I don't remember -- I think he said, "Maybe this will finally put the lid on this song,"...
TG: [laughing] He wants to kill it!
CF: ...something like that.
TG: Tiny Tim is so serious about his music, do you think that he got the irony that you brought to some of the songs?
CF: I don't -- he may or may not have, but in a way -- I don't think it really matters, because I think Tiny realizes on one hand that he is what he is and he loves the old music and loves interpreting the old music and different crooners' styles. At the same time, he's always ready to poke fun at himself or to look at himself as a piece of promotion. I remember there was this Kenwood ad I saw that was sayin,' "We could make everything sound good," and then there was a giant picture of Tiny's face and it said, "Well, almost anything," you know, I think implying that, well, "we can't make Tiny Tim sound good," which, you know, most people would probably take offense at that, and we talked to him about it and he said, [lowers voice to imitate Tiny Tim] "Oh no, they paid me well."
TG: Did Tiny Tim introduce you to songs you were unfamiliar with from the past that you've since really started to like a lot?
CF: Oh yeah, quite a, quite a few, and some of them are on the record. I love "Sly Cigarette," I love "All That I Want Is You," "Springtime in the Rockies." You know we, I think maybe I'd heard "Springtime in the Rockies" once but we decided to do this acapella thing with it, or, or more of a, not so much of an acapella but kind of a barbershop quartet arrangement with, with just his ukelele. And these are three of my favorite songs right now. I really love "Sly Cigarette." I'd like to figure out a way to expand that. It's such a, it's such an improper thing in these days and times to, um, to talk nicely about cigarettes [laughs].
TG: Well, we're going to play "Sly Cigarette" a little later when we hear from Tiny Tim.
CF: Great.
TG: So, uh...
CF: And a cool thing about "Sly Cigarette," incidentally, is that we were trying to find more material that he was familiar with, and he carries around this giant book -- it must have a thousand songs in it at least -- and we literally just thumbed through this thing and that title just, you know, just jumped out at us. So I feel like, within that book, man, there's like a hundred more albums.
TG: One of the tracks on the new record is called "I Believe in Tomorrow." And it's a, it's, you know, an anthem about "People helping people, poverty a thing of the past, love for one another, forever and ever to last." Um, a very corny anthem, which is so much fun on the record. When he brought you the song and said he wanted to do it, what went through your mind?
CF: The things you were just saying, for one thing. Corny, first, and, you know, who really believes this stuff. But, through knowing Tiny, we've, we've come to know a lot of other people, and this was written by a man named Bob Pontes, who writes this kind of stuff. All of his music is like this. And Tiny thinks he is one of the greatest songwriters of the twentieth century and he brought this song in particular in and said, "This is a hit, it speaks to everybody, everybody wants this," and so we thought, man, we've got to do it. And the first few arrangements we didn't like at all. Then we decided to do this, a little more kind of a swing thing, which I thought worked really well. And Bob Pontes, incidentally, is thrilled that this is on the record and has sent many more songs for me to consider.
TG: [laughs] And are you going to?
CF: Well, you know, man, you know there're so many people writing so many songs now that all sound the same, when something like this comes along it at least stands out 'cause, wow!, nobody's writing this!
TG: Oh, how true.
CF: So, you know, in a way, that's the Brave Combo way, so...
TG: And I like your hand claps.
CF: [laughs] Oh, good.
TG: Very inspiring.
CF: Our hand claps and our finger snaps, too.
TG: Yeah, yeah. Okay, this is "I Believe in Tomorrow." Brave Combo and Tiny Tim.
[Excerpt from "I Believe in Tomorrow"]
TG: Music from the new Brave Combo-Tiny Tim collaboration called Girl, and my guest Carl Finch is the pianist and leader of Brave Combo. Now, how did you get to record with Tiny Tim?
CF: James Burnett was bringing him to town, had brought him to town a couple of times before to Dallas -- that's the town I'm talking about -- and on the third trip he thought that we should maybe try to do a show with him. And he was going to be here a few days and thought that maybe we should go into the studio. So we, we thought about it and we had the time and we did the show and it went really well, so we went into the studio and cut the first few songs and the first time in the studio we got some great things and got some pretty lame things [laughs], things that you'll never hear.
TG: But maybe you'll describe them.
CF: Well, Tiny came in and wanted to do, initially he wanted to do a tribute to Michael Jackson and we just didn't want to do that. So then he said let's do a tribute to the Beatles and we thought well, we'll do some Beatles songs and see how that goes. And we did several and we saved a couple, we saved "Hey Jude" and "Girl" from that session. And then we wanted to steer him toward music that he was really familiar with that we thought we could update and, you know, make more palatable to the modern ears.
TG: Now, the liner notes to your new CD with Tiny Tim explain that there was some kind of Mr. Ed festival that initially brought Tiny Tim to town. What is the Mr. Ed Festival and what's the connection between Mr. Ed, Tiny Tim, and you?
CF: Well, once again, James Burnett -- "Big Bucks," as his friends call him -- is also, he's the president of the Tiny Tim fan club, he's also the president of the Mr. Ed fan club. Somewhere he sees these things coming together and he put on a festival called Edstock many years ago, [laughter] and I don't think he'll mind me telling you this, but he lost several thousand dollars on this [laughs]. Tiny Tim was one of the featured performers and so throughout the years Tiny has somewhat been repaying a debt to Mr. Burnett [laughs]. Anyway, the connection is just that James Burnett has this feeling, this strong feeling for both and in fact he got Tiny to record one time the Mr. Ed theme song for a 45.
TG: Oh, I'd like to hear that! This album took a long time, you started it in 1988 and ended it pretty recently. What took so long?
CF: [laughing] Man, don't you feel like the years are just flying yourself? [Terry laughs] I mean, gosh, I don't know, I mean, I kinda know, I remember every second. We met him a long time ago, his schedule's really busy. That's one thing that people should understand about Tiny Tim is he's a busy man, he works constantly. He does concerts, fairs, openings of supermarkets -- just anything -- commercials. He's on Howard Stern pretty regularly, he's a, he really follows the media trends very well, but he was busy and we were busy and we got together and didn't like the album that we produced at that point as a whole. We felt that it was way too novelty-oriented so we wanted to get back together and it took about a year to get our schedules together. Then we wanted to do it again and again it took about a year and then Tiny and "Big Bucks" had a falling out for about three years and that's a big hunk of time when you're trying to finish a record. So, they patched things up and we got back to work and then it took about a year to get it mixed and mastered. And, so, man, you know it seems like yesterday but my life just feels like that now. Eight years doesn't seem like any time at all anymore.
TG: Now, didn't Tiny Tim have a falling out with the producer of your record because he was in love with a friend of the producer's [Carl laughs] who didn't love him back and he couldn't bear to work on the record anymore?
CF: [laughing] Man, that's a vague story isn't it? Well, the story is that, once again, Mr. Burnett, "Big Bucks" Burnett, was the co-producer on the project with Brave Combo and he introduced Tiny to Miss Stephanie, I think it was on the second trip to Dallas, and she had a ukelele and wanted him to give her some pointers and, man, it's like, gosh what was the term? "All the cuckoo clocks in his clock went...," I don't know, forget that, but anyway he flipped out over her and thought she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. And Tiny loves the women, you know, he really does. Women make life worth living to him and he has many stories about relationships over the years and Stephanie was the most beautiful woman he'd seen at the time and he flipped and it didn't work out, so he couldn't bear to be around "Big Bucks" or Brave Combo anymore because we reminded him of Miss Stephanie. So that was the reason we didn't get together for three years.
TG: Hmmm. Okay.
CF: Yeah, I mean, it makes sense to me now, I mean, because I lived through it. But it was very strange. There are so many stories, there are so many stories. Like the time that, in all seriousness, he just looked at me and said, [lowers voice to imitate Tiny Tim] "Mr. Finch, did I ever tell you that I ate a box of Rice-A-Roni without cooking it, one time?"
TG: [laughs] And?
CF: And I said, and you know we were right in the middle, you know, I was at the board mixing at that moment! [laughs] He just, um, where did that come from? [Terry laughs] Uh, geez, you know, he's such an interesting guy. They need to do a made-for-TV movie someday.
TG: My guest is Carl Finch, the leader and pianist of the band Brave Combo. Their new CD with Tiny Tim is called Girl. More after our break.
This is "Fresh Air."
TG: Back with Carl Finch of the band Brave Combo. They have a new CD with singer Tiny Tim. Tiny Tim is kind of obsessive about, uh, washing? [Carl laughs] Did that ever interfere with a session?
CF: Oh sure, yeah. I mean, we had to totally stop and he had to go to the motel a few times.
TG: To shower or bathe?
CF: Yeah. If he had to take care of something, he'd go home and totally clean up and come back fresh. [laughs] So, you know, I don't know how explicit to get, but, um...
TG: I guess that's enough.
CF: Yeah, I mean there were a lot of things we had to do according to his terms. One time he wanted a Coke, you know, and so someone went out to get him a Coke and came back and it was a fountain Coke and hands it to him and he goes, [voice imitates Tiny] "Oh no, no this won't do, must be a canned Coke." So I had to call my wife at home, I mean, we're like tapes rolling practically, and we gotta get on with this, so she had to run a canned Coke over and he said, "That's much better" and he talked for a while about the tiny bubbles in the canned Coke, how important those are.
TG: Was it frustrating or amusing to work with somebody so unusual?
CF: There were times it was really frustrating. One of the few moments I've ever literally run out of the studio screaming because of doing things over and over. Mostly, though, I remember it very fondly and the good stories, which I can, you know, like one time, he didn't want to fly home one time. He lived in New York and he wanted to take the bus! And we begged him, "Don't take the bus! Please, fly." You know we had money for the ticket, he, at that moment his value structure kind of shifts around sometimes when it comes to stuff like that and he wanted to take the Greyhound from Denton -- the first stop an hour later is Dallas -- and he's on the bus for four days. You know, I mean just imagine this: Tiny Tim on a Greyhound bus, Tiny Tim, with his -- I'm not kidding -- with his ukelele sticking out of a paper bag [Terry laughs] and he's four days on the Greyhound to New York City. We were worried to death, you know, and we finally reached him four days later and, [lowers voice to imitate Tiny Tim] "Oh yes, well, I made it fine." All right, whatever.
TG: Oh, great....
CF: So, you know, you don't really judge him by anybody else's rules and as soon as you realize that, and you go into it and realize that you're dealing with Tiny Tim, everything goes pretty well.
TG: Do you have any musician friends who said, "You're crazy to do an album with Tiny Tim"?
CF: Oh, yeah! Dozens. You know, everybody's been confused by this, and I've been really, really pleased that the response has been as good as it has because we were pretty concerned. We wanted this to be a Tiny Tim record and for people to view us as friends in a more supportive position and I'm really glad it's worked out the way it has, you know. I would love it if something from this would actually become a hit -- that seems remote but it's possible.
TG: What would you tell your musician friends when they expressed their skepticism?
CF: Well, I think that a lot of people just don't know the depth of Tiny Tim and a lot of people just think of him as somebody that was on "Laugh-In" or got married on "The Tonight Show" and they don't really know much more about him, you know, he's been viewed as a sideshow freak for so long that I think it's time for us to look at the treasure that he really is. And uh, you know, one cool thing about him is when he sings in these different voices -- his falsetto actually is not his main voice anymore -- he really is imitating different crooners that influenced him over the years and he can do like a very good Russ Columbo, for instance. He nails that guy's style, and who else is gonna do that, you know, who else is even gonna know much about his music except some archivist stuck in some library. You know, he can bring this music out to the public in an entertaining way and I think that's really special.
TG: Are there any songs that you play on your new record with Tiny Tim that are going to be permanent parts of the Brave Combo repertoire now?
CF: Well, we play our own arrangement of "Sly Cigarette" now and we've, as I mentioned before, we've been playing a swing/lounge version of "Stairway to Heaven" for some time. I'd really love to do "All That I Want Is You." The "Hey Jude" cha-cha was our arrangement before we met him and we just had him sing it. And we end the song, we end the song [laughs] even without Tiny with "la la la la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la, cha-cha-cha," you know, we leave the "Hey Jude" totally out of it because the dance is what's important at that point. Yeah, I imagine we'll be doing half these songs eventually. And we're doing some shows with him at some festivals coming up. He's coming to Texas to rehearse, and we're going to basically learn the album all together.
TG: One of my favorite, and one of the strangest, I think, tracks on the new CD is the title track, "Girl," and it's the Lennon-McCartney song. Now I know you chose a couple of Beatles songs for this. Tell me about the arrangement for this, putting this song together with Tiny Tim.
CF: Well, we worked on it a couple of different ways and I always, I always liked this song because I felt like it had kind of a melancholy feel to it and we wanted to take it in a little more sinister direction, because Tiny is pretty verbal about his relationships with women and his feelings. And if you really start talking to him, he'll bring in all of these things that have influenced how he, about why and how he feels about women. So we thought, you know, we could maybe take it a little more of a, give it a little more of a sinister edge and give him a chance to talk a little bit at the end. And I think that's the most revealing aspect to it, you know, is whoever he's thinking about here musta done him wrong, I guess.
TG: Well before we hear "Girl," on the new Brave Combo-Tiny Tim CD, Carl Finch let me thank you very much for talking with us.
CF: Thank you, Terry.
TG: And Carl Finch is the founder, pianist, and leader of Brave Combo and in a moment, we'll hear from Tiny Tim himself. I'm Terry Gross and this is "Fresh Air" and this is the title track of the new CD Girl.
[Excerpt from Girl]
TG: This is "Fresh Air," I'm Terry Gross. Well, we've heard Carl Finch's story, about how his band Brave Combo ended up collaborating with Tiny Tim. Let's meet Tiny Tim himself. It's been over twenty-five years since he was a big commercial success. His hit "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" made it into the top twenty in 1968 and in '69, when he married the woman he called Miss Vicki, on "The Tonight Show," it had one of the biggest audiences in TV history. Tiny Tim, welcome to "Fresh Air."
Tiny Tim: Good afternoon, Miss Terry Gross, this is Tiny Tim, I'm glad to speak to you and your wonderful show.
TG: Do you call everybody "Miss," by the way?
TT: Yes, I call my wife "Miss Sue."
TG: How come?
TT: Well, I do that, it's more formal. I don't want to take no one's name for granted. If I never even meet the person, I don't want to call 'em by their first name, it's not etiquette, and it keeps me in a very, it keeps me in a very etiquette sort of proper way.
TG: Even with your wife?
TT: Yes.
TG: Okay.
TT: I don't want to take no names for granted. I don't even like, frankly, if you want to know, I like to have, when nothing is happening, my pajamas on all the way. I don't like no one to see my body when I'm, there's no need for it.
TG: Should I call you Mr. Tim?
TT: [laughs] If you want you can call me Tiny, too. Whatever feels good to you.
TG: Now, let me play a song from the new CD that's more in your period. Uh, more, I guess this is a turn-of-the-century song, and it's called "Sly Cigarette." Tell me about...
TT: My wife's favorite...
TG: ...this song, how you found it...
TT: That one's my darling wife Miss Sue's favorite, uh, the song was sung in 1898 by S. H. Dudley, one of the great cylinder stars of his day. I got this in a collection of cassette tapes from Mr. Dolittle, a great historian who passed away a few years ago in Florida, and I thought the song was a great, another great melody, and also a "message" song, eventhough it was 1898, it was a shock to see a woman smoking.
TG: Let's hear "Sly Cigarette," and this is Tiny Tim from his new album Girl.
[Excerpt from "Sly Cigarette"]
TG: And my guest is Tiny Tim. So tell me, do you sing in a falsetto anymore?
TT: Yes, right now, in the afternoon, this needs a lot of warm-up, but I'll just see if I can even do a poor version of ... [sings and strums ukelele] "Oh Tiptoe/through the tulips/with me."
TG: And how did you discover your falsetto voice?
TT: Well, I thank Jesus Christ for every gift, because I really prayed about it one day and uh, about 1952 I needed something, something to differench [sic] myself from better singers at the time especially from Tony Bennett, Perry Como, Guy Mitchell, and so every entertainer, every artist, every comedian, every broadcaster, should have a sound, an originality in the voice that the mass can identify with singly. And so originality, originality is the key to success. You can close your eyes and know it's Louis Armstrong, know it's Bing Crosby, and the same thing, even though it's Tiny Tim, if I do [sings] "Tiptoe...," whatever. And so that's what I looked for, that's what I got and from '54 on it proved to be successful.
TG: Now, back in the fifties, before you were famous, how did you dress when you performed?
TT: Well, good question. Another good question. Well, I had, I had a usual shirt and tie and suit jacket. I didn't start wearing costumes until, you know, '68, '69, and Mr. Sharpe in Australia made me unbelievable costumes after that but when you went to amateur night you always had a suit and tie on.
TG: Short hair?
TT: Yeah, until '54. Then everything changed, and not only did the hair become long, which I took a little bit from Rudolph Valentino. Mr. Valentino in his book that he wrote in 1923. And he had his hair parted one way, over the eyebrow. I wanted mine the other way. And the only difference is that while long hair was here since day one, the difference here was that I had whiteface makeup with it. Throughout the day, not just for show business. And the whiteface makeup, whatever Jolson did to blackface, it happened here with whiteface. I had the long hair. So that in 1954 and '55 or '56 in the years that President Eisenhower was here and the McCarthy hearings were ending, I mean that was a rough thing to look at. Twenty-four hours a day.
TG: You said you were wearing the white makeup "not just for show business." What were the...
TT: That's right!
TG: ...what were the other reasons?
TT: Well, another good question, Miss Gross. First of all, since I was not good looking and I didn't want to cut this nose off,-I was afraid of operations,-I've always wanted to appeal to certain type of women I liked. Everyone has their dreams of what they want, and, of course, the hair was too short, so when I wore the makeup -- I should also state that I still cleanse today about eight to twelve times a day and use night creams and eye creams and throat creams and, of course, light makeup -- but at that time I wanted to also appeal to the women, even if they said "Ohhhh, I can't stand him, look at that ugly thing," in the subway train, at least they were paying attention. So part of it was for show business and part of it was to live within myself and be content. And it started to work on both fronts. On the amateur nights I was starting to win on the Larry Love, in the fifties, and on the subway trains around the neighborhood they were all looking! And the high voice also became, believe it or not, appealing to especially the girls who listened to me, whether it was funny or grotesque, it still was appealing. At least they paid attention. And so, that's what, that's the difference, uh...
TG: Now, excuse this cheap bit of psychoanalysis...
TT: Go, go right ahead.
TG: ...but it seems to me in a way what you're saying is that you felt unattractive, you felt like a freak, and so to transcend that you kind of turned yourself into a freak by putting on makeup and growing your hair long and...
TT: Oh, no, whoa, whoa, whoa...I was unattractive, I didn't "think" I was. I was a very ugly person when it came to looks you know uh, well, they looked at it as a freak, you know, with the white makeup and the world looked at it that way and the world looked at the hair like that, especially in the fifties, in the middle fifties, but inside, inside one's heart, I felt that I was, I was -- especially wearing white makeup not dark makeup, because white seemed, I've always looked at the princesses that I adored in my dreams to be, to be equal with the white light, beautiful springtime, and I wanted to feel within me, with the songs and everything that I had a, a sensuality with the women I liked. I don't know if I can explain it that way. And by wearing this light makeup I felt even with myself by keeping clean. I've always looked at women as clean, clean objects who wash their hands all the time with soap, who take care of their bodies and never offend...
TG: So the white makeup gave you a sense of purity and cleanliness.
TT: Beautifully put! Beautifully analyzed, yes.
TG: Do you still wear it?
TT: Well, it's not as white as it is, but it's whitish today.
TG: My guest is Tiny Tim. His new CD with Brave Combo is called Girl. We'll talk more after our break. This is "Fresh Air."
TG: Back with Tiny Tim. Your big breakthrough in terms of celebrity was your recording of "Tiptoe Through the Tulips."
TT: Yes.
TG: In fact, why don't we hear a little bit of it.
[Excerpt from "Tiptoe Through the Tulips"]
TG: How did you make this recording of "Tiptoe Through the Tulips"?
TT: Well, good question. Well, first I was discovered, in 1967, in August, in New York City, at Steve Paul's Scene, a little cabaret club on 46th near 8th Avenue down in the cellar. I was discovered by Mo Ostin, who was then the vice-president of Reprise Records, Mr. Sinatra's company, and it came to Mr. Ostin's attention, he came down to see me play a few songs on the ukelele and then said, "Would you like to sign a contract with Reprise?" That same night of August of '67 I said, "Sure," and they brought me out to Hollywood in November of '67, recorded this, the album in January of '68, and it was produced by Richard Perry who was nobody at that time, and of course he came on to have many more hits like "To All the Girls I Loved Before," "You're So Vain" by Carly Simon. And I was the first big hit he had with "Tiptoe Through the Tulips."
TG: And "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" led to appearances on "Johnny Carson" and "Laugh-In"?
TT: Oh, it sure did. Not "Laugh-In." "Laugh-In" came before the recording came out. "Laugh-In," ironically -- you know when it rains it pours -- when it rains it pours, and while I was in Hollywood getting ready to do the record, word was brought that I was there and they wanted to know if I'd audition for Rowan and Martin. I said, "Sure." This is in '67 in December. So I went there, and the Rowan and Martin audition, with Fred, George Schlatter was there, the big producer, and Fred Friendly, this was the only audition I ever made. I must have failed tons and tons of auditions going back to 'when I couldn't even make Ted Mack's "Amateur Hour" -- I must have tried seven times -- and that's the only audition I ever made, was the big one for the Laugh-In, that's why I told all your listeners you know, thank Jesus Christ...I just say that [unclear passage]...maybe not, but if it's so, fine, because I wanted to make it. And I prayed of course the right way. And if that's the cross I have to bear, fine. In fact, I want to emphasize, in case many articles say that, I'm not trying to change by doing this, this album. I like the songs, whatever's Top Ten. I have a heavy metal record in Sydney, Australia, with "Highway to Hell," which I did in 1993, which never even came out to this country yet. I've done this song because I like this song. Youth makes all music. Youth made ragtime in 1910 when they were saying, "Bring back the old songs" then, like "I Love You Truly." And youth made jazz in the twenties, right after World War I, and the boogie-woogie in the forties, you know and the rock and roll in the fifties after the blacks originally did it, so I'm telling you youth makes their own music. So when I see these old timers say, "Oh what disgusting music it is," they haven't heard it. The rap and the beats and the soul are the music of this generation, and one has to be born again into these songs that when I did "Highway to Hell," just a snip of [sings and strums] "I'm on the highway to hell/living easy, living free/season ticket on a one-way ride," it was with a heavy metal band. So definitely one must take and be born again into this new music today. Uh, just, if I may do one more for you...
TG: Oh, please...
TT: ...Miss Terry, now we just left Decoration Day. And there was another great song, ironically sung by Henry Burr, for the great veterans who died, on Decoration Day, to remember them in 1917. This great song:
[sings and strums]
hmmmm
At a grand old meeting on Decoration Day
I heard a veteran proudly say
What makes us love this country
Land of the brave and free
I'll tell you what said he, it's liberty!
L stands for love of our country
I for independence, too
B for the brave men who fought for us
E the emblem dear red, white, and blue
R for the right that we fight for
T true Americans we'll be
Y is for you and for your country, too
That stands for liberty!
TG: You certainly put your heart and soul into songs when you sing 'em.
TT: Oh, listen there are great romantic songs going back, you know, especially from 1848 in Stephen Foster's time to about '45. The great melodies of the gramophone years, so many like that which I have listened to and which have consoled me in this business...it wasn't the loss of fame or never seeing the cash that got me, it was the broken hearts that I've suffered many years over romances due to my excitabilities or my simplicities that were broken up and I couldn't get them back together again. You're so patient, Miss Terry, just let me do one more number from that period, that even, that I think [of] many times when I think about some women were broken up and I couldn't get them back together again. You're so patient, Miss Terry, just let me do one more number from that period, that even, that I think [of] many times when I think about some women I've hurt with too much of a hasty argument and I've never seen them again. This was written in 1916 by the late, great Ernest R. Ball and J. Keirn Brennan who wrote "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" and "Mother Machree," also sung by Harry MacDonough, great star, just a snip and thanks for your patience...
[sings and strums]
hmmmm....
Turn back the universe and bring me yesterday
Turn back the hands of time that hold life's golden ray
Take back that bitter hour when our love passed away
Turn back the universe and give me yesterday!
Many a time I was singing, "Take back that bitter hour when our love passed away." I have experienced that many times in romances, and I've experienced that in 1985. I was working with the circus then, third-rate circus, Alan C. Hill's circus, going from town to town. I came to a place in New Jersey where I worked, and Pennsylvania, and they allowed me a night off right after the circus to go to a new disco opening up in New York called the Palladium. It was a beautiful girl, Miss Lauren, there. She was so much, I was so much in love with her, she was only nineteen years old and she liked me very much. I'll never forget that great night. But a few years later, about '88 or '89, I had some arguments with her and even though she's had arguments with other people, it was a shock coming out of this mouth, and nothing was the same after that. That's one incident I wish I could "take back that bitter hour, when our love passed away," and to all your listeners, that is true, one word, one gesture, can break up a romance.
TG: You know, everybody's getting rid of their turntables and putting in CD players instead [Tiny Tim laughs], I bet you still have a lot of 78s, right?
TT: [laughs] Uh, not anymore, but, I'll tell you, since you brought this up, I am the only, if I may say [he chuckles], celebrity entertainer, who has at least one or two cylinders in the Edison Museum in Bell Art [?], Illinois, since 1977, if it's still there. At that time I recorded my late conductor on the piano, Marvin Lewis, two Edison cylinders from the machine (they were nice out there to the cut, you know, the old, they shave off the old cylinders), for two minutes to sing some of the greats, one or two great songs of 1904, and this is how I sounded through the cylinder horn:
[sings in wavery voice and strums]
Nothing to do, Nelly Darling
Nothing to do, you say
Let's take a trip down memory's ship
Back to the bygone days
Back to the old village schoolhouse
Back to the dear days of yore
Let's take a trip down memory's ship
Let us go there once more
School days, school days
Dear old golden rule days
Readin' and 'ritin' and 'rithmetic
Taught to the tune of a hick'ry stick
You were my queen in calico
I was your bashful barefoot beau
and you wrote on my slate,
I love you Joe
When we were a couple of kids.
TG: Tiny Tim! And what other performer would want to sound like they were really recorded in 1904, and what other performer would know the verse to "School Days"? [laughs]
TT: Well, a lot of, well remember that great song written by Gus Edwards in this country was the biggest cylinder record of its time and one recorded on the old Columbia 78 at that time which was only one side, it was worn out! This whole world went to this great singer, Byron G. Harlan, and the song "School Days" still plays somewhere today, you know, in someplace around the world. I mean, these are great melodies! I call this "the white man's soul." I know you've heard of the black man's soul with rhythm-and-blues and ragtime, but this is the white man's soul, these great melodies like "You're a Grand Old Flag," like "Yankee Doodle Dandy," "School Days," "In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree." They moved , they moved the hearts of men, women, children, it was not the words alone, but the music had a spiritual uplift. And that's what makes popular music the, in my opinion, the root of all music.
TG: Tiny Tim, thank you so much for being with us.
TT: [laughing] Miss Terry Gross, thanks for being a good listener, and it's a pleasure talking to you and your "Fresh Air" fun.
TG: Tiny Tim has a new CD with the group Brave Combo on Rounder Records. It's called Girl.
[Excerpt from "Hey, Jude"]