Tiny Tim Stuff

As some may know, for over a year I have been working on the definitive biography of the late Tiny Tim. Through my research I got in touch with Richard Barone, founder of The Bongos and author of FRONTMAN: Suriving the Rock Star Myth. For a long time prior to getting in touch with Barone, I had in my possession a copy of a tape found in Tiny's personal tape collection. The recording, from February 29th, 1976, features a 16-year old Richard Barone, along with his friends Sherri and Marla, interviewing and listening to Tiny Tim sing dozens of great songs I'd never heard him perform elsewhere, including a song called "I've Never Seen a Straight Banana."

When I interviewed Barone in December of 2008, I mentioned his tape and told him that he should consider releasing the recordings in some capacity. He then revealed that he had additional Tiny Tim material from a session in an actual recording studio. I kept reiterating that now is the perfect time for a new Tiny Tim release. After a few months, Barone was able to find a record label interested in the project and I soon found myself in a recording studio in New York City playing the Vibra-Slap and singing back-up vocals on the brand new Tiny Tim single, "I've Never Seen a Straight Banana."

Today, an excellent article by Jim Bessman appeared at Examiner.com detailing the new release (my upcoming book is also mentioned):

The New York Times once called him the city’s musical "Man About Town" but singer-songwriter Richard Barone is returning to his Tampa roots in finally releasing the tapes he made with Tiny Tim back in 1976.

I've Never Seen A Straight Banana--Rare Moments: Volume 1, which will be released by Collector’s Choice Music in the fall, will have 15 or 16 tracks along with snippets of other songs that the then 16 year-old Tampa high school student recorded with Tim during a Florida concert tour.

“I was too young to get into the bar he was playing, so I listened at the door,” recalls Barone, who founded the seminal 1980s pop band The Bongos after moving to New York. (He has since put out acclaimed solo albums, conceived novel performance events including all-star tributes to Peggy Lee at Carnegie Hall and the Hollywood Bowl, and authored the 2007 memoir Frontman: Surviving the Rock Star Myth.)

Impressed by the kid’s enthusiasm, Tim did his entire show for Barone in his room at the TraveLodge.

“It was fantastic because he told us stories about the Greenwich Village music scene of the ‘50s and ‘60s that he was part of with people like Lenny Bruce and folk artists like Bob Dylan,” says Barone. “He was such a fine musician and true musical historian. I’d introduced myself as a record producer and asked if I could bring a tape recorder the next night and record his stories and songs, and he treated me like an adult.”

Barone did in fact record Tim both at the motel and at a Tampa recording studio.

“He was doing songs from the earliest days of the Edison [recording] cylinders,” says Barone. “It was a real education for me to see pop music extended beyond The Beatles.”

Where past producers had told TIm what material to record, Barone offered the chance to cut what he wanted.

“He was a musicologist and was trying to keep songs alive,” Barone says. “And he was interested in showing a correlation between early recording artists and current ones like Dylan, so he juxtaposed a Rudy Vallee song sung in Dylan’s voice with a Dylan song sung in Vallee’s.”

But Barone was still in school, and formed the Bongos soon after leaving for New York.

“Every time I saw him in the ensuing years he’d say, ‘Mr. Barone, you must release those tapes!’” he continues. “Then I was interviewed by Justin Martell, who’s writing a biography of Tim. He said I should put this stuff out--and the tape copies held by his estate had my business card. So I realized their importance to Tim, and I’m fulfilling my promise to him now with loving care.”

According to Barone, Tim especially wanted a hit single--specifically the obscure British music hall tune from 1926 that is the album titletrack, "I've Never Seen A Straight Banana."

“He said, ‘Mr. Barone. We must put this out as a single,’ and saw it as a follow-up to [his 1968 hit revival of 1920s standard] ‘Tiptoe Through The Tulips’,” says Barone. “So we spent a day in the studio last week trying to give it the same flavor.”

For that session Barone gathered top New York musicians to augment Tim’s vocal and ukulele. These included The Roches’ Terre Roche, vocalist Margaret Dorn, pianist Eddie Rabin (also a cousin of Tiny Tim), Donovan percussionist Candy John Carr, guitarist Steve Addabbo and multi-instrumentalist Deni Bonet. But the rest of the album, Barone says, is inspired by Tim’s 1968 debut album God Bless Tiny Tim.

“It was one of the most perfectly crafted pop albums of that era because of its structure,” he explains, “the way it opened a cappella with ‘Welcome To My Dream’ and then beautifully interwove music and spoken word. We’re trying to keep some of that spirit here.”

Other key tracks include the “Tiny Meets Dylan” medley of Rudy Vallee’s “Vagabond Lover,” Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone” and Vallee’s “My Time Is Your Time”, and “Baby Shoes,” performed by Tim in the style of Henry Burr—one of his favorites from the pre-electric microphone era (Burr had a hit with the song in 1916).

There’s also Tim’s take on “Mr. Phonograph,” which was recorded shortly after Thomas Edison invented the phonograph.

“It was a song he pulled out of a shopping bag full of early sheet music that he always carried around,” says Barone.

While the focus was on historical material, Tim also recorded bits of songs that were contemporary, including Janis Ian’s “At Seventeen,” Neil Sedaka’s “Laughter In The Rain” and Kris Kristofferson’s “Help Me Make It Through The Night.”

Tiny Tim would continue to record sporadically until his death in 1996. His album Girl, for which he was backed by Texas polka band Brave Combo, was released that year and was very well received.

“A lot of people see him as a joke when he was really one of the most musically aware and versatile musicians of the last century,” says Martell. “What’s unique about I’ve Never Seen A Straight Banana is that it was recorded when he was still in his prime, before his voice started to wear and his health declined. And that a 16 year-old kid from Tampa saw something in him that the music professionals and insiders at the time did not.”

Read the Full Article (With Photo)

In the Studio with Richard Barone on July 20th, 2009.