Tiny Tim will always be associated in the public's mind with the Tin Pan Alley song "Tip Toe Through the Tulips with Me." In 1968 this song gave Tiny Tim his one and only top twenty hit. When Tiny and his first wife Miss Vicki were visited by the stork, he named his one and only daughter Tulip Victoria. Tiny recorded various versions of "Tulips" in his post-stardom career, including a disco rendition in 1977, and parodies of the number, like "Tip-Toe to the Gas Pumps" in 1979 and "I Saw Mister Presley Tiptoeing Thru the Tulips" in 1988.

The first hit version of "Tip Toe" was done by Nick Lucas. Lucas was born Dominic Antonio Nicholas Lucanese in Newark, New Jersey, on August 22, 1897.. Lucas was known in vaudeville as "The Singing Troubadour," and was listed as "The Crooning Troubadour" on many of the numerous 78's that he recorded, beginning in the 'teens. He had a friendly, handsome dark-haired appearance, looking a tad like humourist Harry Shearer.

In addition to his talent as a vocalist, he was also a whiz bang musician and composer. He played the banjo and mandolin, and was one of the first performers to popularize the acoustic guitar. He wrote and recorded the very first solo-guitar records: "Pickin' the Guitar" and "Teasin' the Frets," which were released by Pathe in 1922. He published numerous books on the "Nick Lucas Guitar Method" which were hugely successful. There were Nick Lucas guitar picks and the Nick Lucas Special, a guitar bearing his name produced by the Gibson company.

In the late 'teens and early 20's Lucas and his brother Frank recorded for Pathe as the Lucas Ukulele Trio and the Lucas Novelty Quartet. In the mid-20's he sang with the Oriole Orchestra at the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago. The orchestra at that time included famed pianist Ted Fiorito, who wrote "Laugh Clown Laugh." Lucas blossomed with the Oriole Orchestra, and his showmanship lead to a recording contract with Brunswick.

Some of the many successes he recorded are: "Isn't She the Sweetest Thing,", "Your Mother and Mine" (Brunswick 4378), "Brown Eyes, Why Are You Blue?" "In a Little Spanish Town," and several of his own compositions, including "I've Named My Pillow After You" and "I'm Tired of Everything But You.".

Lucas had a hit with "Ukulele Lady" (1925) with lyrics by Gus Kahn and music by Richard A. Whiting. Whiting wrote the other "Tulip" hit: "It's Tulip Time in Holland," which sold 1 1/2 million units of sheet music. Whiting also wrote the Shirley Temple hit "On the Good Ship Lollipop" which was later recorded by Tiny Tim.

Another Lucas hit was "Oh, How I Miss You Tonight." This number was composed by Joe Burke (1884-1950), the gentleman that wrote (with lyricist Al Dubin) "Tip Toe Through the Tulips." Dubin and Burke also wrote "Painting the Clouds with Sunshine" which was the flipside on the "Tip Toe" 78 disk that Lucas recorded for Brunswick. This 78 sold more than 2 million copies. The sheet music for "Tip Toe" was the number one seller in the U.S. for over 4 months. "Painting the Clouds with Sunshine" was revived in the 1970's on the Dennis Potter BBC TV series "Pennies From Heaven." Burke and Dubin also co-wrote the memorable "Dancing With Tears in My Eyes" (1930) which was a smash hit for Rudy Vallee on his radio program.

Lyricist Al Dubin (1891-1945) was a hard living chap, capable of writing tender love songs or witty novelty numbers, while blundering through a personal life that was, by most accounts, packed like sardines with rage and alcoholism.. He had a hit with "South American Way" (1939) which was featured in the Broadway show "Streets of Paris" and later got an energetic treatment by Carmen Miranda in her first American movie, 1940's Down Argentine Way.

Dubin seemed to like writing songs with a "Something, Something, and You" format. He wrote, with co-lyricist Billy Rose, "A Cup of Coffee, A Sandwich and You" (1925) which was sung by Gertrude Lawrence. He also gave us "A Latin Tune, A Manhattan Moon and You' (1940).

Dubin's greatest work was done in collaboration with composer Harry Warren (1893-1981). These songs are truly timeless gems. Together Dubin and Warren wrote music for the brilliant 1930's Hollywood musicals overseen by Busby Berkeley.

In 1933 they were involved with two classic movies: They wrote the title song for the film 42nd Street and for Gold Diggers of 1933 they wrote "Pettin' in the Park," "The Shadow Waltz" and the fabulous "Gold Digger's Song (We're in the Money)" a true slice of Depression Americana peach cobbler.. Then, in 1934 they wrote "I Only Have Eyes for You" for the film Dames. In 1935 they wrote "Lullaby of Broadway" for Gold Diggers of 1935, which won the Oscar for Best Song.

In addition to being issued on 78 rpm record and piano roll, "Tip Toe Through the Tulips With Me" also got a huge boost by its use in the 1929 Warner Brothers Vitaphone talking picture "Gold Diggers of Broadway," sung by Nick Lucas. Lucas starred in two pictures in 1929, "Gold Diggers" and "Your Show of Shows," in which he sang "Your Mother and Mine."

"Your Show of Shows" was essentially a series of unrelated Vaudeville sketches strung together by an emcee. It starred, in addition to Lucas, everyone from Rin Tin Tin to John Barrymore, who recited a soliloquy from Shakespeare's "Henry VI." The film was billed as a "Sweeping demonstration of the supremacy of Vitaphone."

Vitaphone was Warner Brother's method of presenting movies with audio. There were, in the 1920's, two competing "sound with film" technologies. Warner's Vitaphone method, developed by Bell Telephone Laboratories, consisted of film, synchronized with heavy over-sized sound disks played on special turn tables. It was, basically, silent movies carefully cued to records.

The second "movie audio" method, which in the end won out over Vitaphone, was the now universally used format of audio imprinted directly on the film strip. This technology, which was already in limited use before the ponderous Vitaphone presented itself, was invented by Lee De Forest. He called it "Phonofilm." Fox Pictures called it "Movietone."

Although Vitaphone was cumbersome, Warner Brothers promoted it fiercely. In the end, the Vita-films, spear-headed by the movie that is erroneously but regularly listed as the first "Talkie," Al Jolson's The Jazz Singer (1927), saved Warners from financial collapse.

1929's Technicolor "Gold Diggers of Broadway" starred Lucas, Nancy Welford, Ann Pennington and Conway Tearle. It was the first in a line of fabulous, escapist Gold Digger movies (The first "talkie" that is, as there had been a silent Gold Diggers film in 1923). The two best known (and funnest) films in the series are Gold Diggers of 1933 and Gold Diggers of 1935. "1933" stars Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell and Ginger Rogers. All the players are vivacious and have the honor of performing in awe-inspiring production numbers by the legendary Busby Berkeley. A highlight of the film is the rendering of "We're in the Money" sung, including at one point in Pig Latin, by Ginger Rogers.

"1935" again stars Dick Powell, this time joined by the dapper Adolphe Menjou, singer Winifred Shaw, and Gloria Stuart, who returned to the screen decades later in "Titanic." A highlight is the elaborate "Lullaby of Broadway."

"Tip Toe Through (sometimes spelled "Thru") the Tulips" is an admittedly silly, campy song. The famous version Nick Lucas recorded (on May 9, 1929) shows that he is fully aware of the camp nature of the material. Lucas had a pleasantly breezy, high vibrato crooner voice.. On "Tip Toe" he sings higher than normal, coming flirtatiously close to falsetto. The leap from the Nick Lucas vocal treatment to the over-the-top Tiny Tim rendition is easy to make. On the 1929 version, the song is executed by a cheerful string section, and by acoustic guitar, played by Lucas in a complex but utterly tasteful ragtime style. It is a memorable 2 minutes 43 seconds.

Nick Lucas performed "Tip Toe" in a 1934 Warner Bothers short entitled What this Country Needs and filmed the number in 1944 for the Soundies Corporation of America (the '40's equivalent of MTV.)

In the '50s Lucas did lengthy runs in Las Vegas, Reno and Lake Tahoe. He appeared often on television, being a semi-regular on the Ed Sullivan show. His career of course got a boost when Tiny Tim recorded his signature number. In 1974 Lucas recorded music for the soundtrack of the films The Great Gatsby and The Day of the Locust. In the 1980's he appeared on top of a tulip-covered float in the world-famous Tournament of Roses Parade. He died on July 28, 1982.

In between the 20's Lucas version and the Tiny Tim 60's version we find occasional pleasant recordings of "Tip Toe." No vocalist, Tim and Lucas included, bothers to included the 2nd verse lyrics of the song, which begin:
"Come out and pet me, come and Juliet me, Tease me and slyly coquette me. Let me Romeo you. I just want to show you..." Some of the more entertaining recorded versions are, in fact, instrumental.

In the '50s we get a Latin cha-cha "Tip Toe" on the album "Happy-Go-Loco" by Joe Loco and His Orchestra. Reginald Dixon does a bubbly one-man version on the album "Organ Memories." Dixon recorded "Tip Toe" on the Wurlitzer pipe organ at the Tower Ballroom in Blackpool, England. Blackpool is a seaside, Coney Island-type resort town. The Tower Ballroom is an enormous, cavernous place, with interiors that resemble a grand opera house in the style of the Palace of Versailles. Dixon played the organ at public dances there. His "Tip Toe" is done as a nifty shuffle accompanied by drums and sand blocks.