Table Of ContentThis book is dedicated to my mother, Michelle Audette O’Donnell, and also to two of
Tiny’s biggest advocates and my friends, the late Martin Sharp and the late Ernie
Clark.
—Justin Martell
For my strong mom, who gave me books.
—Alanna Wray McDonald
ETERNAL TROUBADOUR
The Improbable Life Of Tiny Tim
Justin Martell with Alanna Wray McDonald
A Jawbone book
First edition 2016
Published in the UK and the USA by Jawbone Press
3.1D Union Court,
20–22 Union Road,
London SW4 6JP,
England
www.jawbonepress.com
Volume copyright © 2016 Outline Press Ltd. Text copyright © Justin
Martell. All rights reserved. No part of this book covered by the copyrights
hereon may be reproduced or copied in any manner whatsoever without
written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
articles or reviews where the source should be made clear. For more
information contact the publishers.
Edited by Tom Seabrook
Cover design by Mark Case
Contents
Introduction by Harry Stein
One Neighborhood Children
Two The Human Canary
Three America’s Answer To The Beatles
Four You Are What You Eat
Five Welcome To My Dream
Six The Holy Freak
Seven My Community
Eight Beautiful Thoughts
Nine Miss Vicki
Ten ‘Being Of Sound Mind …’
Eleven Don’t Bite The Hand That’s Feeding You
Twelve The Blessed Event
Thirteen ‘This Thing Kills Me To The Bone’
Fourteen Fears Of Failure
Fifteen Can’t Help But Wonder Where I’m Bound
Sixteen The Eternal Troubadour
Seventeen Do You Think I’m Sexy?
Eighteen Forever Miss Dixie
Nineteen Miss Jan
Twenty The Great American Circus
Twenty-one Marvelous Mervo
Twenty-two Tiny Saw Elvis!
Twenty-three Hide Away In I-O-Way
Twenty-four Sweet Sue, Just You
Twenty-five Some Sort Of Bad Alice Cooper Video
Twenty-six I Know God Still Loves Me
Twenty-seven This Is Not Madness Or Acting
Twenty-eight ‘Tiny Tim Is Signing Off!’
Twenty-nine Tiptoe To Eternity
Acknowledgments
A Note On Sources
Illustrations
I feel that I’ve done my best to keep romantic crooning alive. It’s not really that hard.
I would say it’s just a matter of closing your eyes and dreaming. People may say that
now is not the time for crooning, but I think that if a song is good, it’s good for all
time. There have been thousands and thousands of hit songs on record and sheet
music—songs that deserve to be remembered forever. After all, just as much happened
yesterday as is going to happen tomorrow. That’s why words like then and now don’t
mean anything to me. It’s true the great crooners have faded away, but that doesn’t
mean that the beauty and romance and peace they worked so hard to create has faded
with them. It can still be with us—it’s alive and real—in fact, I heard it just this
morning.
—Tiny Tim, ‘The Great Crooners,’ Playboy, December 1969
The Tiny Tim image is not one that people rejoice over. It is an image that [is] the
Master of Confusion. What is he? What is he saying? Is he a geek? Is he a queer?
They can’t relate and they’re ashamed to say they even remember me. … If I say
I’m putting you on, they’d say, I told you so. If I said I’m not, they’d still say the
same thing. The difference between me and Rudy Vallee, Frank Sinatra, Elvis
Presley, is with them, people said, Aaahh! With me they said, Uugghh! The emotion
of negativity was so, so emotional that they had to be there. I was the one they loved
to hate.
—Tiny Tim to the Phoenix New Times, November 3 1994
Introduction
by Harry Stein, author of Tiny Tim: An Unauthorized
Biography
When Tiny Tim burst on the scene in the late 60s, like most everyone else I
assumed that if not precisely a fraud, he was surely a put-on. How could he
not be? From that otherworldly falsetto to his stringy hair and pancake
makeup, from the ukulele in the shopping bag to the absurd formality with
which he addressed even children, to his bizarro answers to questions about
women and sex, no one was that weird by accident. Not even in the 60s.
Indeed, smirking away with friends in my girlfriend’s dorm room the night
in 1970 he married Miss Vicki on The Tonight Show, we had no doubt this
was America’s new low in anything-for-ratings cynicism.
It was only about four-and-a-half years later—November 12 1974, to be
precise, as the vastly entertaining and scrupulously researched book in your
hands confirmed—that I began to understand how wrong we’d been.
Unable to sleep that late evening, I snapped on the TV, and there was Tiny
Tim, back on Johnny Carson’s guest couch after a long hiatus. I would soon
learn that this is what was known as a ‘charity booking,’ for in the interim,
both Tiny’s career and his personal life had taken a steep nosedive. Talking
to Carson, he was almost somber, seeming to have no interest in playing to
the audience. When Carson expressed his regret over the collapse of his
marriage, Tiny waxed philosophical: ‘Well, Mr. Carson, we’re still married
in the eyes of the Lord. My door is always open to her. All I ask is that she
get a VD test.’
As the audience erupted in astonished laughter, Carson bounced his
pencil on the desk and gave his patented blank stare. Yet, watching, it
couldn’t be clearer the guy meant it. I walked into my editor’s office the next
morning and announced: ‘I want to write about Tiny Tim.’
