Small Change (Tom Waits album)

This article is about the album by Tom Waits. For the 1976 film by Truffaut, see Small Change (film).
Small Change
Studio album by Tom Waits
Released September 1976
Recorded July 15, 1976 – July 29, 1976 at Wally Heider Recording, Hollywood, CA
Genre Vocal jazz, blues, folk jazz
Length 49:28
Label Asylum
Producer Bones Howe
Tom Waits chronology
Nighthawks at the Diner
(1975)		 Small Change
(1976)		 Foreign Affairs
(1977)

Small Change is a studio album by Tom Waits, released in 1976 on Asylum Records. It was recorded in July 1976.

Production

Small Change was recorded, direct to 2-track stereo tape, July 15, 19-21 and 29, 1976 at the Wally Heider Recording Studio, in Hollywood, USA[1] under the production of Bones Howe.

Music

The album featured famed drummer Shelly Manne, and was, like Waits' previous albums, heavily jazz-influenced, with a lyrical style that owed influence to Raymond Chandler and Charles Bukowski as well as a vocal delivery influenced by Louis Armstrong, Dr John and Howlin' Wolf. The music for the most part consists of Waits' hoarse, rough voice, set against a backdrop of piano, upright bass, drums and saxophone. Some tracks have a string section, whose sweet timbre is starkly contrasted to Waits' voice.

"Tom Traubert's Blues" opens the album. Jay S. Jacobs has described the song as a "stunning opener [which] sets the tone for what follows."[2] The refrain is based almost word by word on the 1890 Australian song, "Waltzing Matilda" by A.B. "Banjo" Paterson, although the tune is slightly different.

The origin of the song is somewhat ambiguous. The sub-title of the track "Four Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen" seems to indicate that it is about a time that Waits spent in Copenhagen in 1976 while on a tour. There, he apparently met Danish singer Mathilde Bondo. Indeed, in a 1998 radio interview, she confirmed that she met Waits and that they spent a night on the town together. Waits himself described the song's subject during a concert in Sydney Australia in March 1979: "Uh, well I met this girl named Matilda. And uh, I had a little too much to drink that night. This is about throwing up in a foreign country."[2] In an interview on NPR's World Cafe, aired December 15, 2006, Waits stated that Tom Traubert was a "friend of a friend" who died in prison.[3]

Bones Howe, the album's producer, recalls when Waits first came to him with the song:

He said the most wonderful thing about writing that song. He went down and hung around on skid row in L.A. because he wanted to get stimulated for writing this material. He called me up and said, "I went down to skid row ... I bought a pint of rye. In a brown paper bag." I said, "Oh really?." "Yeah - hunkered down, drank the pint of rye, went home, threw up, and wrote 'Tom Traubert's Blues' [...] Every guy down there ... everyone I spoke to, a woman put him there."[2]

Howe was amazed when he first heard the song, and he's still astonished by it. "I do a lot of seminars," he says. "Occasionally I'll do something for songwriters. They all say the same thing to me. 'All the great lyrics are done.' And I say, 'I'm going to give you a lyric that you never heard before."' Howe then says to his aspiring songwriters, "A battered old suitcase to a hotel someplace / And a wound that will never heal." This particular Tom Waits lyric Howe considers to be "brilliant." It's "the work of an extremely talented lyricist, poet, whatever you want to say. That is brilliant, brilliant work. And he never mentions the person, but you see the person."[2]

The song has been recorded by Rod Stewart on two 1993 albums, Lead Vocalist and Unplugged...and Seated under the title "Tom Traubert's Blues (Waltzing Matilda)".

Album closer "I Can't Wait to Get Off Work (And See My Baby on Montgomery Avenue)" has a simple musical arrangement, boasting only Waits' voice and piano. The lyrics are about Waits' first job at Napoleone Pizza House in San Diego, which he began in 1965, at the age of 16.[4]

Themes

At the time of the recording of Small Change Waits was drinking more and more heavily, and life on the road was starting to take its toll on him. Waits, looking back at the period said:

I was sick through that whole period [...] It was starting to wear on me, all the touring. I'd been travelling quite a bit, living in hotels, eating bad food, drinking a lot - too much. There's a lifestyle that's there before you arrive and you're introduced to it. It's unavoidable.[5]

In reaction to these hardships Waits recorded Small Change (1976), which finds Waits in much more cynical and pessimistic mood lyrically than his previous albums, with many songs such as "The Piano Has Been Drinking" and "Bad Liver and a Broken Heart" presenting a bare and honest portrayal of alcoholism, while also cementing Waits' hard-living reputation in the eyes of many fans. The album's themes include those of desolation, deprivation, and, above all else, alcoholism. The cast of characters, which includes hookers, strippers and small-time losers, are for the most part, night-owls and drunks; people lost in a cold, urban world.

With the album Waits asserted that he "tried to resolve a few things as far as this cocktail-lounge, maudlin, crying-in-your-beer image that I have. There ain't nothin' funny about a drunk [...] I was really starting to believe that there was something amusing and wonderfully American about being a drunk. I ended up telling myself to cut that shit out."[6]

Beyond the serious themes with which the album deals, the lyrics are often also noted for their humour; with songs such as "The Piano Has Been Drinking" and "Bad Liver And A Broken Heart" including puns and jokes in their treatment of alcoholism, with the added humour in Waits' drunken diction.

Cover

The cover art features Waits sitting in a go-go dancer's dressing room, with a topless go-go dancer standing nearby. The go-go dancer is Cassandra Peterson,[7] best known as the iconic character Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.

Reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Allmusic link
Mojo
The Rolling Stone Album Guide[8]

Small Change received critical reviews equal to or better than Waits's previous albums, and was at first a surprise commercial success, rising to #89 on the Billboard chart within two weeks of its release. Three weeks later, the album fell off the Billboard Top 200, and Waits was not to better its position until 1999's Mule Variations.[1]

When asked in interview by Mojo magazine in 1999 if he shared many fans' view that Small Change was the crowning moment of his "beatnik-glory-meets-Hollywood-noir period" (i.e. from 1973–1980), Waits replied

Well, gee. I'd say there's probably more songs off that record that I continued to play on the road, and that endured. Some songs you may write and record but you never sing them again. Others you sing em every night and try and figure out what they mean. "Tom Traubert's Blues" was certainly one of those songs I continued to sing, and in fact, close my show with.[9]

Track listing

All songs written and composed by Tom Waits.

Side one

No. Title Length
1. "Tom Traubert's Blues (Four Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen)"   6:39
2. "Step Right Up"   5:43
3. "Jitterbug Boy (Sharing a Curbstone with Chuck E. Weiss, Robert Marchese, Paul Body and The Mug and Artie)"   3:44
4. "I Wish I Was in New Orleans (In the Ninth Ward)"   4:53
5. "The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me) (An Evening with Pete King)"   3:40

Side two

No. Title Length
1. "Invitation to the Blues"   5:24
2. "Pasties and a G-String (At the Two O'Clock Club)"   2:32
3. "Bad Liver and a Broken Heart (In Lowell)"   4:50
4. "The One That Got Away"   4:07
5. "Small Change (Got Rained on with His Own .38)"   5:07
6. "I Can't Wait to Get Off Work (And See My Baby on Montgomery Avenue)"   3:17
Total length:
 49:28

Personnel

Chart positions

Chart (1976) Peak
position
US Billboard 200[10] 89

Certifications

Region Certification Sales/shipments
Australia (ARIA)[11] Gold 35,000
United Kingdom (BPI)[12] Silver 60,000
Summaries

*sales figures based on certification alone
^shipments figures based on certification alone
xunspecified figures based on certification alone

References

  1. 1 2 "Tom Waits Time line: 1976 - 1980". Retrieved 2007-01-18.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "Tom Traubert's Blues". Tom Waits Library. Retrieved 2007-01-18.
  3. ↑ Interview with Tom Waits on NPR's World Cafe, aired December 15, 2006
  4. ↑ Montadon, Mac, Timeline and Discography in Innocent When You Dream, p. 385
  5. ↑ McGee, David (1977), Smellin' Like a Brewery, Lookin' Like a Tramp, in Montandon, p.29
  6. ↑ McGee, David (1977), Smellin' Like a Brewery, Lookin' Like a Tramp, in Montandon, p.30
  7. ↑ "When Elvira met Tom Waits".
  8. ↑ "Tom Waits: Album Guide". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on September 19, 2011.
  9. ↑ ""Tom Traubert's Blues" lyrics and notes". Tom Waits Library.
  10. ↑ Small Change – Tom Waits: Awards at AllMusic. Retrieved July 26, 2012.
  11. ↑ "ARIA Charts – Accreditations – 2001 Albums". Australian Recording Industry Association. Retrieved July 26, 2012.
  12. ↑ "British album certifications – Tom Waits – Small Change". British Phonographic Industry. Retrieved July 26, 2012. Enter Small Change in the field Keywords. Select Title in the field Search by. Select album in the field By Format. Select Silver in the field By Award. Click Search

External links

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