FRANK AND TIM: SO DIFFERENT, SO SIMILAR
By Mahnuel Muñoz
In the 1968 album “Cycles” Frank Sinatra covers a dozen pop songs of the moment with orchestral arrangements by Don Costa. The rhythmic themes allow us to hear a veteran singer trying with uneven success to be part of the latest musical trends, while in the deep and calm pieces he confesses his intimate personal and professional anguish.
The title song of the album is a perfect summary of what our man is experiencing in those days; Even the images that illustrate the album communicate it without subtlety: on the cover, Frank sitting in a corner of the recording studio with a body language that denotes exhaustion and sadness. On the back cover, he talks and even laughs with two of the most relevant artists of the moment: Tiny Tim and George Harrison. The invincible Sinatra is uneasy, perhaps even frightened by the way in which “his” world disappears in the middle of a multicolored psychedelic storm, and, knowing that he cannot defeat it, he tries to join it. In 1970 he recorded for the first time a version of George Harrison’s “Something” and stated in public, without hesitation, that “it is the best love song ever written and it doesn’t even say ‘I love you‘.”
His relationship with Tiny Tim is stranger. As extravagant as Tiny Tim’s character is, deep down they were both unique human beings and artists out of their time.
Tiny Tim signed with Reprise Records in 1968 after his popularity skyrocketed among an audience eager for new experiences. He is a tall man, with long hair, outlandish clothes, a childish attitude and a disturbing face who sings, accompanied by a ukulele, songs from the late 19th and early 20th centuries with a chilling falsetto or a tenor voice typical of the early crooners. Tiny Tim is the target of ridicule by mainstream culture, but that doesn’t stop him from singing alongside Bing Crosby himself and achieving notable success with his debut, “God Bless Tiny Tim,” a fascinating mishmash of old vaudeville tunes. and dense psychedelic pieces that manage to rise to seventh place on the Billboard charts. The album includes a surprisingly emotional version of Gordon Jenkins’ classic “This Is All I Ask“, (which Frank masterfully performed on the album “September Of My Years“) and above all the single that became his emblem, “Tiptoe Through The Tulips“-a popular song published in 1929-which was among the twenty best sellers. The label has such faith in Tiny Tim’s commercial appeal that they record him live at London’s Royal Albert Hall, backed by a large orchestra.
He made two more LPs for Reprise, and the last of them, a children’s album titled “For All My Little Friends” (1969), earned a Grammy nomination for best children’s album. In 1980 he released an album titled “Chameleon” that closed with a delirious but passionate version of “My Way.”
Who died in 1996 during one of his concerts, Tiny Tim is a cult character who continues to have numerous admirers, and his music has survived to this day thanks to its use in the series “SpongeBob SquarePants” (1999, in Spain, “Bob Esponja“) and the horror film “Insidious” (2010), as well as a documentary titled “Tiny Tim: King For A Day“, presented in 2020.
In some way, like Sinatra, his work has made it possible for the younger public to know all those old songs that otherwise would have been forgotten.
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