Tiny Tim (musician)

By his pre-teen years, he developed a Passion for records, specifically those from the 1900s through the 1930s.

He began spending most of his free time at the New York Public Library, reading about the history of the phonograph industry and its first recording artists.

He researched sheet music, often making photographic copies to take home to learn, a hobby he continued for his entire life.

He grew up in the Washington Heights neighborhood in Manhattan, where he attended George Washington High School.

She had immigrated from Brest-Litovsk, present-day Belarus, as a teen in 1914.

His father, Butros Khaury, was a textile worker from Beirut, present-day Lebanon, whose father was a Maronite Catholic priest.

Tiny Tim himself was a devout Catholic.

Khaury displayed an interest in music at a very young age.

At the age of five, his father gave him a vintage wind-up gramophone and a 78-RPM record of "Beautiful Ohio" by Henry Burr.

He would sit for hours listening to the record.

At the age of six, he began teaching himself guitar.

Herbert Butros Khaury (April 12, 1932 – November 30, 1996), also known as Herbert Buckingham Khaury, and known professionally as Tiny Tim, was an American musician and musical archivist.

Tiny Tim was born Herbert Khaury in Manhattan, New York City, on April 12, 1932.

His mother Tillie (née Staff), a Polish-Jewish garment worker, was the daughter of a rabbi.

In 1945, while recovering from appendix removal, he read the Bible and listened to music on the radio.

After his recovery, he rarely left his room except to go to school, where he was described as a mediocre student.

He dropped out of high school after continuously repeating his sophomore year, taking a series of menial jobs.

Around this time, he discovered he could sing in a high register while listening to Rudy Vallée and taught himself to play ukulele using an Arthur Godfrey method book.

He would later describe this period of his life as a "religious experience".

By the early 1950s, Tiny Tim had landed a job as a messenger at the New York office of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, where he became ever more fascinated with the entertainment industry.

He then entered a local talent show and sang "You Are My Sunshine" in his newly discovered falsetto.

He started performing at dance club amateur nights under different names, such as "Texarkana Tex", "Judas K. Foxglove", "Vernon Castle", and "Emmett Swink."

To stand out as a performer, he wore wild clothing, grew his hair long and wore pasty white face makeup, partly inspired by Rudolph Valentino.

His mother did not understand Herbert's change in appearance and was intending to take her now-twentysomething son to see a psychiatrist at Bellevue Hospital until his father stepped in.

In 1959, he performed as "Larry Love, the Singing Canary" at Hubert's Museum and Live Flea Circus in New York City's Times Square.

While there, he signed with a manager who sent him on unpaid auditions throughout Greenwich Village.

At this stage he began performing the song that would later become his signature, "Tiptoe Through the Tulips".

Throughout the 1960s, Tiny Tim made numerous appearances in film and television.

In 1963, he landed his first paid gig at Page 3, a lesbian-run club on the corner of Charles Street and Seventh Avenue, playing six hours a night and six nights a week for $96 per month.

For the next two years, he performed as "Dary Dover" and later "Sir Timothy Timms".

After a show in which he was booked to follow a "midget" act, his manager George King decided to bill him as "Tiny Tim" - a name which stuck.

He had a cameo in Jack Smith's Normal Love from 1963.

He is known for his 1968 hit song "Tiptoe Through the Tulips", which he sang in a falsetto voice.

He also featured in 1968's You Are What You Eat, singing the Ronettes' "Be My Baby" and Sonny and Cher's "I Got You Babe" as a duet with Eleanor Barooshian, in which Tiny took the Cher part.

This led to a booking on the comedy variety show Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In.

Co-host Dan Rowan announced that Laugh-In "(believed) in showcasing new talent" before introducing Tiny Tim, who arrived on stage with a ukulele in a shopping bag and sang "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" and "On the Good Ship Lollipop" while an apparently genuinely dumbfounded Dick Martin watched.

He sang "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" on both his second and third appearances on the show.

His debut God Bless Tiny Tim was released by Reprise Records in 1968.

"Tiptoe Through the Tulips" was released as a single and reached No. 17 on the Billboard chart.

Tiny Tim's 2nd Album followed in 1968, featuring a portrait of Tiny Tim and his parents on the cover.