Somebody did a presentation about Tiny Tim at the recent Pop Conference at the Experience Music Project museum in Seattle.

It's unfortunate that he is mostly remembered as some kind of freak -- the long stringy hair, ukelele and falsetto voice; the wedding on TV; the child-like overly respectful speech patterns all made him the butt of hundreds of jokes -- because he was a great re-creator of American popular music between about 1900 and 1950. If you can find it, listen to the original Nick Lucas record of "Tiptoe Thru the Tulips" and compare it to the Tiny Tim hit. It's almost note for note identical.

A lot of Tim's repertiore was taken from great old records and sheet music. There's a clip of an appearance on the "Hollywood Palace" TV show with Bing Crosby where Tim sings an obscure song and Crosby looks at him in amazement and says he hasn't heard that song since he sang it with Jessica Dragonette on his old radio show thirty years earlier.

But somehow, his appearance and the way he was packaged turned away most of what should have been his natural audience of old-timers who remembered the originals. And the record companies gave him current rock and roll songs that brought out the freak image, like "Stairway to Heaven."

So you have to be somewhat selective in choosing which of his recordings to listen to. And it helps to know something about the earlier singers he was imitating (or channeling). For example, try the "Tribute to Russ Columbo," and compare it to a collection of Columbo originals.

On his own terms, he was a fine singer and a keeper of the flame of American Popular Songs.