Music: Andy, Jackie, and Tiny

Last February, at the height of Pat Buchanan Mania, another well-known, middle-aged, conservative Christian Pat B. announced that, to "get attention," his next recording would consist entirely of heavy-metal songs. It's June, and Pat Boone in a Metal Mood has yet to hit the stores, but that doesn't mean that conservative Christians with an interest in cultural oddities have been left in the lurch-not when one of the top-50 bestselling albums in the country for the past two months has been I Love to Tell the Story, a collection of hymns sung by Mr. Mayberry himself, Andy Griffith.

Not that Mr. Griffith is a stranger to hit records. Forty years ago, he topped the charts with "What It Was Was Football," a comedy routine in which he impersonated a naive bumpkin recounting his first football game. Still, considering how seldom even the most ardent fans of The Andy Griffith Show and Matlock have been known to clamor for more of Mr. Griffith's singing, one views the sudden omnipresence of his smiling face on the CD shelves of Christian bookstores with bemusement.

It's a bemusement that the music itself compounds. For instance, why were two arrangers-David Huntsinger and Steve Tyrell-needed to arrange the hymns in what can only be described as "generic hymnal"? And why did Mr. Tyrell occasionally marshal as many as 32 backup singers to all but drown Mr. Griffith out? And why are tens of thousands of people every week shelling out enough money for a tankful of gas to hear "Amazing Grace" sung by a man who sings no better than any other pew-weary septuagenarian?

Actually, I Love to Tell the Story has moments of humble charm. "Wayfaring Stranger," a mournful spiritual in which the singer's reluctance to die dampens his enthusiasm for reuniting with loved ones, suits Mr. Griffith particularly well. But in most of the other songs he simply drops his jaw and sings as if nuance and diction were nothing more than highbrow impediments to raw expression. Which means that, unlikely as it seems, Mr. Griffith may have come to represent the elder generation's version of the revenge-of-the-common-man vocal esthetic so beloved of baby-boomer Bob Dylan fans.

Compared to both Mr. Dylan and Mr. Griffith, the Jackie Gleason of And Awaaay We Go!, the newly reissued compilation of vintage Gleason vocal performances, sounds almost virtuosic, or, as the liner notes say, "like a Dixieland Al Jolson or Eddie Cantor." Unlike the many romantic-strings albums that bear the Gleason name, Awaaay emphasizes the late comedian's vaudevillian blend of singing and slapstick, collecting eight songs that he composed for his various stage and Honeymooners characters (Ralph Kramden's pre-feminist "One of These Days-Pow!," Joe the Bartender's "Hy'a Mister Dennehy"), as well as two comedy recitations ("Casey at the Bat," "I Had but Fifty Cents") and-well, romantic-strings music.

Unlike the usual Gleason romance music, however, the seven instrumentals on Awaaay possess a rigor that comes from having been composed (by Mr. Gleason in almost every case) with a specific dramatic context in mind. Therefore, instead of sounding like aural wallpaper, the selections "Melancholy Serenade (Theme from The Jackie Gleason Show)," "Our Love Is Here to Stay (Ralph Kramden's Apology-to-Alice Music)," and "You're My Greatest Love (Love Theme from The Honeymooners)" create vivid impressions of the culture in which Mr. Gleason's abundantly generous showmanship flourished.

Perhaps that explains why the National Review music club offers an all-instrumental Jackie Gleason disc among its conservatively tailored menu. One thing's certain-Mr. Gleason's reference to the titular character of "Here's Charlie" as "a lollapalooza" proves that the word has a much nobler past than its current use as the name of an annual alternative-rock tour would suggest.

Anyone waiting anxiously for Pat Boone's heavy-metal album will probably enjoy Girl, the first significant recording in years by that paragon of peculiarity, Tiny Tim. Although none of Girl's 14 songs bear witness to the Christian faith that Mr. Tim articulated two years ago in an interview with the satirical Christian magazine The Door, the songs do bear witness to his peculiar genius for never having met a song he didn't like.

The liner notes call him "a living treasury of romance and music," and the song selection seems designed to prove it. Beatles songs ("Girl," "Hey Jude"), pop standards ("New York, New York," "Stardust," "Over the Rainbow," "Bye Bye Blackbird"), and flat-out corn ("Sly Cigarette," "I Believe in Tomorrow") follow one after the other, linked by Mr. Tim's vibrato-heavy baritone-at 60-something, he can no longer summon his famous falsetto at will-and Brave Combo, the Grammy-nominated sextet known for their commitment to mastering musical styles as foreign to each other as polka and Oriental folk.

Brave Combo's tight, lively playing is what keeps Girl from sheer novelty. Not only do they provide the often campy songs with a solid musical grounding, but they also seem to have tempered Mr. Tim's more unnerving vocal eccentricities. Not that a tempered Tiny Tim isn't plenty eccentric already, but with Brave Combo he seems less like a sideshow attraction and more like a well-preserved escapee from a time capsule sealed in the days of minstrel shows.

And by recording Led Zeppelin's heavy-metal warhorse "Stairway to Heaven" as a snappy cabaret number, Mr. Tim and the Combo not only strip the song of the overblown significance accorded it by backward-masking zealots, but they also beat Pat Boone to the heavy-metal punch with humor and style. As playful foils to Mr. Griffith's stolid musical orthodoxy, both And Awaaay We Go! and Girl tunefully recall the importance of not being earnest.