A walking freak show and the ultimate novelty act of the '60s. But behind Tiny Tim's fruity falsetto antics lay a genuine love of his material, most of it taken from the 20’s - an equally odd time in popular music--before the rise of Bing Crosby--when nearly all white male vocalists were no-voice freaks. I can't honestly say that Tim's debut LP survives its own novelty value in the end. But it's a well-produced smorgasbord of highly entertaining moments complete with genuine hilarity ("The Viper") and some genuinely touching performances as well, especially the ones done in the singer's natural baritone (Gordon Jenkins' "This Is All I Ask," "Then I'd Be Satisfied with Life.") Another curiosity: why was this kind of faux-vaudeville so popular in the '60s? Does anybody remember "Winchester Cathedral"? In that sense Tiny Tim fit right into his times. During the late '50s and early '60s when he performed at Hubert's Museum (singing Don Gibson's "Oh Lonesome Me" underwater) and appeared in Jack Smith's Normal Love, he was merely freakish.
–Singer Saints
No comments:
Post a Comment