Small Change
Encyclopedia
Small Change is an album by Tom Waits
, released in 1976 on Asylum Records
. It was recorded in July 1976.
, in Hollywood, USA under the production of Bones Howe
.
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." The refrain is based almost word by word on the 1890 Australia
n song, "Waltzing Matilda
" by A.B. "Banjo" Paterson, although the tune is slightly different.
The lyrics are written from the perspective of a first person unreliable narrator
. 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." 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.
Bones Howe, the album's producer, recalls when Waits first came to him with the song:
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 (still at 619 National City Blvd, National City, CA) in San Diego, which he began in 1965, at the age of 16.
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."
However, 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.
, a model and professional show girl who is best known for playing the character Elvira.
chart within two weeks of its release. However, Small Change fell off the Billboard Top 200 three weeks later, and Waits was never to better its position until 1999's Mule Variations
.
When asked in interview by Q 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
Side One
Side Two
Tom Waits
Thomas Alan "Tom" Waits is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car."...
, released in 1976 on Asylum Records
Asylum Records
Asylum Records is an American record label founded in 1971 by David Geffen, and partner Elliot Roberts, who had previously worked as agents at the William Morris Agency. Founded specifically to provide a record contract for Jackson Browne, the label signed Tom Waits, Linda Ronstadt, Joni Mitchell...
. It was recorded in July 1976.
Production
Small Change was recorded, direct to 2-track stereo tape, July 15,19,20,21, and 29, 1976 at the Wally Heider Recording StudioWally Heider Studios
Wally Heider Studios was a recording studio in San Francisco, California between 1969 and 1980, started by recording engineer and studio owner Wally Heider.-History:...
, in Hollywood, USA under the production of Bones Howe
Bones Howe
Dayton Burr "Bones" Howe is a Grammy-award-winning record producer and recording engineer associated with 1960s and 1970s hits, mostly of the sunshine pop genre, including most of the hits of The 5th Dimension and The Association, as well as music supervision of several films...
.
Music
The album featured famed drummerDrummer
A drummer is a musician who is capable of playing drums, which includes but is not limited to a drum kit and accessory based hardware which includes an assortment of pedals and standing support mechanisms, marching percussion and/or any musical instrument that is struck within the context of a...
Shelly Manne
Shelly Manne
Shelly Manne , born Sheldon Manne in New York City, was an American jazz drummer. Most frequently associated with West Coast jazz, he was known for his versatility and also played in a number of other styles, including Dixieland, swing, bebop, avant-garde jazz and fusion, as well as contributing...
, and was, like Waits' previous albums, heavily jazz-influenced, with a lyrical style that owed influence to Raymond Chandler
Raymond Chandler
Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American novelist and screenwriter.In 1932, at age forty-five, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in...
and Charles Bukowski
Charles Bukowski
Henry Charles Bukowski was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles...
as well as a vocal delivery influenced by Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....
, Dr John and Howlin' Wolf
Howlin' Wolf
Chester Arthur Burnett , known as Howlin' Wolf, was an influential American blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player....
. 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." The refrain is based almost word by word on the 1890 Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n song, "Waltzing Matilda
Waltzing Matilda
"Waltzing Matilda" is Australia's most widely known bush ballad. A country folk song, the song has been referred to as "the unofficial national anthem of Australia"....
" by A.B. "Banjo" Paterson, although the tune is slightly different.
The lyrics are written from the perspective of a first person unreliable narrator
Unreliable narrator
An unreliable narrator is a narrator, whether in literature, film, or theatre, whose credibility has been seriously compromised. The term was coined in 1961 by Wayne C. Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction. This narrative mode is one that can be developed by an author for a number of reasons, usually...
. 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
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
in 1976 while on a tour. There, he apparently met Danish
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
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." In an interview on NPR
NPR
NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...
's World Cafe
World Cafe
World Cafe is a two-hour long, nationally syndicated music radio program that originates from WXPN, a non-commercial station licensed to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. The program began in 1991 and was originally distributed by Public Radio...
, aired December 15, 2006, Waits stated that Tom Traubert was a "friend of a friend" who died in prison.
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."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."
The song has been recorded by Rod Stewart
Rod Stewart
Roderick David "Rod" Stewart, CBE is a British singer-songwriter and musician, born and raised in North London, England and currently residing in Epping. He is of Scottish and English ancestry....
on two 1993 albums, Lead Vocalist
Lead vocalist
The lead vocalist is the member of a band who sings the main vocal portions of a song. They may also play one or more instruments. Lead vocalists are sometimes referred to as the frontman or frontwoman, and as such, are usually considered to be the "leader" of the groups they perform in, often the...
and Unplugged...and Seated
Unplugged...and Seated
Unplugged...and Seated is a live album released by Rod Stewart on May 24, 1993 . It is Stewart’s second live album and his first appearance on MTV Unplugged. The album was released by Warner Bros. Records...
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 (still at 619 National City Blvd, National City, CA) in San Diego, which he began in 1965, at the age of 16.
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.
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."
However, 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 dancer in the background of this photo is thought to be Cassandra PetersonCassandra Peterson
Cassandra Peterson is an American actress best known for her on-screen horror hostess character Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. She gained fame on Los Angeles television station KHJ wearing a black, gothic, cleavage-enhancing gown as host of Movie Macabre, a weekly horror movie presentation...
, a model and professional show girl who is best known for playing the character Elvira.
Reception
It received critical reviews equal to or better than Waits's previous albums, but was at first a surprise commercial success, rising to #89 on the BillboardBillboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
chart within two weeks of its release. However, Small Change fell off the Billboard Top 200 three weeks later, and Waits was never to better its position until 1999's Mule Variations
Mule Variations
-Related promo CD:As a promotional limited offer, an EP titled Hold On was later released with two of the tracks from the Mule Variations album plus two previously unreleased tracks...
.
When asked in interview by Q 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.
Track listing
All songs written by Tom Waits.Side One
Side Two
Personnel
- Harry Bluestone – violin, concertmaster strings
- Jim Hughart – bass
- Ed Lustgarden – cello, orchestra manager strings
- Shelly ManneShelly ManneShelly Manne , born Sheldon Manne in New York City, was an American jazz drummer. Most frequently associated with West Coast jazz, he was known for his versatility and also played in a number of other styles, including Dixieland, swing, bebop, avant-garde jazz and fusion, as well as contributing...
– drums - Lew TabackinLew TabackinLew Tabackin is a jazz flautist and a tenor saxophonist. He is married to Toshiko Akiyoshi, who is a jazz pianist and a composer/arranger.-Biography:...
– tenor saxophone - Tom WaitsTom WaitsThomas Alan "Tom" Waits is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car."...
– vocals, piano - Jerry YesterJerry YesterJerry Yester is an American folk rock musician, record producer, and arranger.Growing up in Burbank, California, Yester formed a duo with brother Jim Yester, the Yester Brothers, and starting playing folk clubs in Los Angeles in 1960...
– arranger & conductor of string section
External links
- MacLaren, Trevor, "Tom Waits: Small Change", 2004 March 2 All About Jazz.com link