For All My Little Friends

After Tiny Tim's Second Album proved to be a commercial flop, Tim's decision to make a children's record probably didn't seem like a terribly shrewd career move (not that the former Herbert Khaury was especially careerist), and the album that followed didn't help matters much. While Richard Perry's production on Tim's first two albums gave the singer a rich aural backdrop for his journey through America's musical past, much of For All My Little Friends is just Tim with his ukulele, and while his performances are strong most of the time, they become a bit monochromatic by the end of side two. (Perry co-produced the album with Gene Shiveley, and significantly the only full-on production number here, a cover of "What the World Needs Now Is Love," is credited to Perry alone.) More importantly, while Tim's earlier sessions displayed a surprisingly diverse musical range conveying any number of moods, For All My Little Friends is dominated by tunes about animals ("Sammy the Seal," "Oliphant the Elephant," "Bill the Buffalo") and proper behavior (numbers about brushing your teeth, knowing your name and address, and not picking on others, the latter surely holding some very real resonance for this life-long misfit). Ultimately, this album suffers from a severe case of the cutes, and while children may or may not be attracted to its oddball charms, grown-ups who enjoyed Tiny Tim's previous albums for Reprise will have a hard time latching onto this one, which proved to be his last album until the mid-'80s (and his last major-label release ever).