Old Songs, Public Libraries and Speakers Pressed Upside Your Head...

 Tiny Tim, the falsetto singing ukulele player who sold 2000,000 copies and got a Grammy nomination for his first album "God Bless Tiny Tim" which included the 1968 hit "Tip Toe Through the Tulips" is a fellow many would underestimate. It's not that way around here. 

In addition to someone I know who once spent an evening in a dark room with large 1960s vintage stereo speakers pressed to each side of the head studying Tim's music with a method I have been assured that gets the very most from it there was also the songs my late father in law Bill Cooney played. Bill, a uke and tenor banjo player born in 1931 and Tim born in 1932 no doubt heard some of the same songs because they played in similar styles. Both were also devout Catholics.  

So how do you learn these songs?  Well, in Bill's case I'm not so sure. He did not learn things like "Dark Town Strutter's Ball" at Mass. He did not learn them at clarinet lessons since we know from his own verbal history of musical development that he skipped the lesson and used the money to buy cigarettes.

We do know how Tiny Tim learned his songs. It's very well documented. Tim was a bit of a weird kid. It was noted that he had musical talent and started teaching himself instruments at the age of six. He did not do well in school and spent some time mostly in his room recovering from a surgery while reading the Bible and listening to music. 

Tim lived in New York City and his interest in the phonograph industry and early recording artists of the 1900-1935 period led him to spend all available time in the New York Public Library. There's 55 million books in that library. Wiki reports that Tim researched the musicians he read about, made copies of their music he found in the library and carried the tunes home to learn to play them. It was a practice he continued his whole life. He was a walking catalog of songs.  

I'm not much of a rock music memorabilia collector. A couple of years ago a friend needed to raise some funds and began selling off his collection and one of the items was a Tiny Tim autographed copy of an early Rolling Stone magazine cover. There were many other tempting historical items available but a weird kid who made good following the most unusual path possible was a something worthwhile to have. 

There are people out there that say there are bad books in a public library. Don't let them fool you. There are bad people paying them to say things like this hoping that you have the seed planted in your mind that the library is a bad place where for example, you might read about someone different from you or you might actually find true information about virus control. You might even learn to play old strange songs different from what the internet streams choose for you.  Of course it's just my humble opinion but I don't think these people are smart enough to go through the 55 million books New York City Public Library and spot bad books much less good songs. They will find it easier to just burn the whole place down which is a popular idea making the rounds these days. 

Be like Tiny Tim, the weird kid that looked stuff up in the library. Be like Bill Cooney but don't use your clarinet money for cigarettes. Seek out funny, unusual songs. Don't burn the world, build it.

    www.venmo.com/u/Carl-Wallace-23