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Tiny Tim (musician)

American singer and musician (1932–1996)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 16, 2026
Entity authorityQ979347 ↗
Source-derived summary

Herbert Butros Khaury (April 12, 1932 – November 30, 1996), also known as Herbert Buckingham Khaury, and known professionally as Tiny Tim, was an American musician, songwriter and musical archivist. He is especially known for his 1968 hit cover of "Tiptoe Through the Tulips", a song from the 1929 musical Gold Diggers of Broadway. "Livin' in the Sunlight, Lovin' in the Moonlight", which

was featured and popularized in the SpongeBob SquarePants pilot episode, "Help Wanted" in 1999, was rated as 2nd best song at "Top 10 Tiny Tim Songs". Tiny Tim was renowned for his wide vocal range, in particular his far-reaching falsetto.

Life and career

Early years

Tiny Tim was born Herbert Khaury in Manhattan, New York City, on April 12, 1932. His mother Tillie (née Staff), a Polish-Jewish garment worker, was the daughter of a rabbi. She had emigrated from Brest-Litovsk, present-day Belarus, as a teen in 1914. His father, Butros Khaury, was a textile worker from Beirut, present-day Lebanon, and the son of a Maronite Catholic priest. Tiny Tim himself was a Roman Catholic.

Khaury displayed an interest in music at a very young age.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Tiny Tim (musician)” as american singer and musician (1932–1996). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Tiny, musician and American.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1932, 1996, 1968, 1929—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1932-04-12. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Tiny, musician and American providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Tiny Tim (musician)”, the useful work is to connect “american singer and musician (1932–1996)” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q979347. VIAF identifies the subject as 46956507. The Library of Congress control number is n50047839. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1932, 1996, 1968 and 1929.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Tiny Tim (musician)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Tiny Tim (musician) primary sources, Tiny Tim (musician) archive and Tiny research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Tiny Tim (musician)”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Tiny Tim (musician)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.