I've received an amazing number of messages about Herbert "Tiny Tim" Khaury, the subject of this recent posting here. If I post them all here, this will turn into a Tiny Tim website so I'll just share this one from my buddy Howard Johnson…
Tiny Tim was a friend of my good friend, improv icon Del Close.
Del used to tell me about Mr. Tim. Around the latter part of 1958, Del first met him when he was working as a fire-eater at Hubert's Museum and Flea Circus in New York. At that time, Tiny Tim was working there as Larry Love, the Human Canary.
Del once described him as "…not so much a singer as a haunted house. He'd turn into people like early Bing Crosby or Tex Ritter. 'Cause this falsetto voice is only one of the many personalities haunting the caverns of Mr. Tim's mind. He got his start playing lesbian bathhouses in New York…so he basically thought of himself as a lesbian. That's why he wore makeup, to make himself more attractive to the ladies…"
Hugh Romney convinced him to come to L.A. to appear in The Phantom Cabaret Strikes Again. (He and Romney had previously been part of the original Phantom Cabaret in New York.) He arrived with nothing but twenty cans of Popeye Spinach. He stayed in Romney's guest house (Close was also a guest), where he used to take 2 to 3 hour showers.
The theater was across the street from the Hollywood Ranch Market. On his last night there, he had so endeared himself to the management of the market that they let him sing over the public address system. According to Romney, "There wasn't a dry eye in the whole place as he sang 'Old Shep' and 'I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier.'"
After that, Mr. Tim went on to national fame and fortune thanks to Laugh-In and The Tonight Show.
Fast forward to December 11, 1993. I was working as Marketing Director for Moondog's Comics in Chicago, where one of my duties was to produce and host Moondog's Pop Culture Radio Show for Gary Colabuono. Del would occasionally co-host with me, which was always fun, and we had pop culture and comic book guests on each show. That week, our guests included Don Simpson, Joe Quesada, and Jimmy Palmiotti, along with my wife, Laurie Bradach. And somehow, thankfully, we booked Tiny Tim.
I picked up Del (who only lived a block away from me), and we drove out to the suburban hotel where Mr. Tim was staying. I met him in the lobby, where he brought his ukulele in a brown paper shopping bag, and an overpowering scent of a very strong cologne. He was very effusive and grateful to be appearing on the show, and he was very surprised and happy to be reunited with Del; the two hadn't seen each other in nearly 30 years. ("Oh, Mr. Close! Mr. Close!") He called everyone "Mister" or "Miss," even when it was just the three of us, so I took a cue from Del and called him "Mr. Tim."
The ride from the hotel to the radio station was one long, joyous reunion with his peer; I only wish I'd had a tape recorder running. I recall the two of them discussing ex-wives, mind-blowing when I suddenly realized he was married on The Tonight Show. Mr. Tim noted ruefully that "The marriage was over as soon as they turned off the TV cameras."
We got to the radio station and proceeded with a jam-packed show. Del sat in on the interview, and Mr. Tim played a few songs on his uke (he didn't attempt "Tiptoe Through the Tulips," as he didn't seem like he wanted to attempt the high notes). But it was a very memorable program. He told the story of owning the first 20 issues of Captain America comics when he was younger, and losing them when he gave them to a girl he was trying to impress. I had known about this in advance (it may have been noted in a Marvel Bullpen Bulletins page) and so when the show had finished, I gave him some reprints of Golden Age Captain America comics, which thrilled him.
We rode back to Del's apartment and dropped him off, and I turned back to take Mr. Tim to his next appointment. For nearly the entire ride, Mr. Tim gave me a private solo concert on his uke, singing some incredibly obscure century-old songs. (Who knew that "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" had actual verses? But he knew every one of them!)
During my hours with Mr. Tim, I think everyone found him to be very intelligent, very entertaining, and he was constantly using religious epithets like "Praise God!" in every other sentence — but only off the air). There are several stories about Mr. Tim in my Del Close biography The Funniest One in the Room.
And lastly, I should point out that for the next two weeks, I thought of Mr. Tim whenever I got in my car. Because that was how long I could detect the scent of his cologne.
Several folks sent me stories that mentioned Mr. Tim's overpowering cologne, detectable even when seated in the tenth row of a performing space. But I had not known he had a relationship with Del Close, who was one of the most important people in comedy in his era. For those unfamiliar with Mr. Close, I have put on an Amazon link on its title above. A very fine book.
I think the main takeaway from all this is that Tiny Tim was more than a guy some TV shows had on so they could laugh at a human oddity. He was a serious performer who often enchanted audiences with his ukulele, voice and knowledge of music from the first part of the twentieth century. It's nice to realize how popular he became for a while there.