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Heart failure
takes the life
ofT yTim
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Tiny
Tim, the scraggly haired singer with
the falsetto warble and ukulele who
crooned “Tiptoe Through the Tu
lips” into a 1960s counter-culture
classic, has died. He was 66.
He died at the Hennepin County
Medical Center Saturday night af
ter apparent cardiac arrest, nursing
supervisor Ellen Lafans said.
Tiny Tim already suffered from
congestive heart failure, diabetes
and other problems. He collapsed
and fell off the stage Sept. 28 after
a heart attack at a ukulele festival
in western Massachusetts.
“If I live 10 years, it’s a miracle.
Five years, it’s even more of a
miracle,” Tiny Tim said after an 11 -
day hospital stay that followed the
collapse. ,
“I am ready for anything that
happens,” he said. “Death is never
polite, even when we expect it. The
only thing I pray for is the strength
to go out without complaining.”
Bom Herbert Khpury, Tiny Tim
built an unusual career as an enter
tainer on his single hit song in 1968,
his stratospheric falsetto, an asexual
and childlike stage persona, and a
shy man’s uncanny flair for self-pro
motion.
His 1969 marriage to Miss Vicki
Budinger on Johnny Carson’s “The
Tonight Show” attracted a television
audience of 40 million yie^rerS;,.
Tiny Tim later managed to parlay
his momeaf ffif<p0p 3hfrie hit# ah'
enduring career of concerts, albums
and seemingly endless appearances
at festivals, fairs and nightclubs.
Sometimes, he seem surprised
himself.
“In this business, you’re as good
as your last hit record, and mine was
more than 26 years ago,” he said in
an interview with the Minneapolis
Star Tribune. “Next year will be my
27th comeback.”
A native of New York City, he
grew up listening to his parents’ 78
rpm records and fell under the sway
pf Bing Cro^ilfei o&er crooners :-l
of the, early and”mi(Hle 20ffi cen
- iwy; Hfeeveutually started singing -
popular tunes in small public set
tings and took various stage names,
including Larry Love.
T_ 1 A/A il_/ X*_a. 1 *_I_-a_
ui i 7uv/, ult iriuui-i-uitti tuiti -
tainer was given his ultimate stage
name by an agent who had worked
with midget acts. He made his first
national television appearance on
“Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-in.”
While the music of Jimi
Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Led Zep
pelin laid siege to the sensibilities
of middle America, the older Tmy
Tim seemed to offer a benign, comic
foil. “Tiptoe Through the Tulips”
dates from the late ’20s, but Tiny
Tim appropriated the song in the
collective memory of the flower
generation.
“He would sing in this very high
voice and play his ukulele and act
like a child almost. If we had ren
egade rockers on one side, he was
the other side,” said T. Dennis
Brown, a historian of American
popular music at the University of .
Massachusetts.
He later cleaved to his stage per
sona so consistently that he almost
found authenticity on the far side of
camp. Fans wondered where Tiny
Tim ended and Herbert Khaury be
gan—or ifthey did at all anymore.
“It’s a question as to how much
is Tiny Tim and how much he has
created a character/’ saidTenee ‘;
Please see TDK on 14
Tear and Loathing’
on tape
By Ann Stack
\ Book Critic
Hunter S. Thompson, cult icon and
father of gon^o journalism, has re
leased a dramatic adaptation of his in
famous novel “Fear and Loathing in
Las Vegas.”
Celebrating 25 years of “strange
and terrible craziness,” Margaritaville
Records released an audio version oi
the book, which was originally pub
lished serially in Rolling Stone Maga
zine Nov. 11 and Nov. 25,1971, under
the pseudonym Raoul Duke,
Thompson’suiter ago.
The book chronicles Thompson’s
drug-induced pilgrimage through the
heart of rank American materialism
and excess in the city that gives that
notion its life breath. Itfs an escape
from, and, ultimately to, the sweaty,
Writhing, stoned chassis of the Ameri
can Dream.
With an intro and “outro” by Th
ompson, and narrated by Harry Dean
Stanton, the recording features Jim
Jarmusch as the voice of Duke the pro
tagonist, and Maury Chaykin as his
“300-pound Samoan attorney,” known
in the book as “Doctor Gonzo” (in real
life, he is Oscar Zeta Acosta, a radical
Chicano attorney).
The cast of characters also includes
Rolling Stone editor and publisher Janr
Warner (playing a Rolling Stone edi
tor) “Roseanne’s” Laurie Metcalf,
“Saturday Night Live’s” Joan Cusack,
Buck Henry and Harry Shearer, and
Thompson’s personal friend, singer
Jimmy Buffett. 7
So, armed with a fed convertible
aptly named “The Great Red. Shark,”
and “two bags of grass, 75 pellets of
mescaline, five sheets qfhigh-pqjtfered
blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of
cocaine and a whole galaxy of uppers,
downers, screamers, laughers.,.a q^art
qf tequila, a quart of nun, a case of
Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two
dozen amyls,” Duke and Gonzo set out
on assignment.
Yes, assignment — to cover the
Mint400 motorcycle and dune buggy
off-road race and later^thc National
District Attorney Association’s Drugs
and Narcotics Conference.
“Our trip was different,” Duke says
of the mission, “ft was a classic afflr- \
mation of everything right and true and
decent in the national character. It was
a gross, physical salute to the fantastic
possibilities of life in this country —
Please see THOMPSON on 14
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