Tiny Tim never deserved his fate. As a television personality in the late '60s, the hirsute minstrel became a one-man hippie parody and was subsequently dispatched to the day-glo dustbin of used pop culture icons, along with metal lunchboxes and scratched copies of his own loopy (and still out-of-print) God Bless Tiny Tim album. All of which drew attention from his real talents as a musical comedian and consummate vaudevillian-style entertainer. What other performer would or could render Bob Dylan songs as Rudy Vallee, and vice-versa, flawlessly accompanying himself on ukulele and dressed in a suit of old comic book covers?Happily, Girl revives Tiny Tim not as a campy nostalgia piece but as a serious, quirky, and seriously quirky artist. Brave Combo founder Carl Finch and company are aware of the line between kitsch and class, and they have built their career on breathing new life into neglected musical forms. The band puts the singer through its danceteria paces on a twist version of "Bye Bye Blackbird" and a spacy, cha-cha-cha "Hey Jude." But the album works best when the gang plays it straight and lets Tiny Tim's natural humor emerge. He whispers and sighs through the title track. The 1898 obscurity "Sly Cigarette" becomes a hilarious apologia for the cigarette's "small, little nature." "That Old Feeling" is awash in lush barbershop harmonies. And on the showstopping "Over the Rainbow," Tiny Tim pushes the limits of his 66-year-old falsetto, calling to mind both the wide-eyed Judy Garland of The Wizard of Oz and the aged chanteuse of A Star is Born. It's a bravura performance, and Brave Combo and co-producer Bucks Burnett deserve credit for coaxing these tears from a clown.
New York
July 29, 1996
Of all the musical realms that the intrepid musicians of Brave Combo have surveyed-from polka to waltz to schottische to huapango -- on their latest record, Girl, they've truly entered the otherwordly. Rather than visiting Balinese gamelan or Japanese gagaku, Girl explores a place inhabited solely by one New York-bred, 65-year-old Lebanese-American by the name of Herbert Khaury -- a.k.a. Tiny Tim. Those who remember nothing more of Tim than a kitschy mega-novelty act are missing what the men of Brave Combo have found to be a living repository of singing styles from pop's golden age, a one-man Tin Pan Alley. "I know it sounds kind of dull," says Combo guitarist/keyboardist Carl Finch, 44, "but I really think he's one of the greatest pop stars ever. There's this magic of him losing touch with reality to sing a song. He becomes this amazing interpreter of the music." On the sweet and hauntingly weird Girl, said music runs to classics from the Gay Nineties to the thirties, including "That Old Feeling," "Stardust," and the 1898 chestnut "Sly Cigarette." More typical of Brave Combo (which performs sans Tim at the Westbeth Theatre, July 23, and Midsummer Night Swing, July 24), Girl also includes such compelling disorientation as a cha-cha "Hey Jude" and a grave reading of the Beatles' title track, which Tim closes with an impromptu spoken lament. Turns out, Tim is something of a monologist as well. "He has no one writing his rules," says Finch. "In the middle of mixing [the record], he started to tell me about eating a box of Rice-A-Roni dry."