Tommy’s Coffee Break Calendar for April 12th

Classic singles from the Sixties and Seventies and some overdue props for a really misunderstood American artist...

4/12/1969 (50 years ago today) - You couldn't help singing along, you really couldn't: The 5th Dimension start a six week run at No. 1 on the Billboard singles chart with "Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In", the rousing finale to the Broadway musical "Hair". Somewhat sadly, it coincides with the end of the whole 1960's-love-is-the-answer vibe, a rather sobering nexus...

4/12/1975 (44 years ago today) - A detectable slide in quality control: Elton John's "Philadelphia Freedom" is the No. 1 single in America for two weeks in a row. The start of a stretch of some questionable "thin one's"...

4/12/1933 - Born on this date, the one and only Tiny Tim, who had a Top 20 single in 1968 with his chirpy version of "Tiptoe Through The Tulips". Though most of the country mocked his bizarre appearance and high falsetto voice (via some quite-strange-at-the-time performances on "Laugh-In" and "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson"), Tiny (real name Herbert B. Khaury) was a very intelligent musical archivist and quite serious about saving American music that most of us knew little about. I had the chance to do a live morning show with Tiny Tim in the 1980's when I was working at a rock radio station in Manchester, N.H., and I gotta tell you, not only was this guy not tiny (well over six feet tall!), but he was, in fact, very smart and keenly aware that most people didn't get what he was doing, but he kept on keeping on anyway. On a personal note, I was thoroughly charmed, entertained and intrigued by Tiny Tim; turns out he was really pretty cool. He passed away on November 30, 1966, at age 64.

Share your uh-huh's with the Calendar here on our web site and on the WBLM Facebook and Twitter pages with the hashtag #TommysCoffeeBreak.

"Knee deep in flowers we'll stray/We'll keep the showers away...", xoxo!