Small Change is the fourth studio album by singer and songwriter Tom Waits, released on September 21, 1976, on Asylum Records. It was recorded in July at Wally Heider's Studio 3 in Hollywood. It was successful commercially and outsold his previous albums. This resulted in Waits putting together a touring band - The Nocturnal Emissions, which consisted of Frank Vicari on tenor saxophone, FitzGerald Jenkins on bass guitar and Chip White on drums and vibraphone. The Nocturnal Emissions toured Europe and the United States extensively from October 1976 till May 1977.

Production

<blockquote>

"The album's called Small Change. It's all about ambulance drivers, night watchmen, ticket takers, street sweepers, tattoo parlors, stage door jockeys, shoe string hotels from New York City to Chicago, Buffalo, Los Angeles, all the way from Tuxedo Junction to swing town. Did it in five nights on the corner of Selma and Cahuenga. Recorded complete and direct to 2-track stereo tape." —Tom Waits, 1976. Artist statement used in the album's promotional advertisements. </blockquote>

Small Change was recorded, direct to 2-track stereo tape, July 15, 19–21 and 29, 1976, at Wally Heider's Studio 3 in Hollywood under the production of Bones Howe. A multi-track recording was made as back up, and used when a reference Waits made to actress Jayne Meadows had to be changed. Howe recounted: "We set up at Heider's for that record the same way I used to make jazz records in the 1950s. I wanted to take Tom back to that direction of making records, with an orchestra and Tom in the same room, all playing and singing together. I was never afraid of making a record where the musicians all breathed the same air. Leakage is not a problem. In fact, it's a good thing — it holds a record together... He was always surrounded by the music and the records sound like it. We never used headphones. Never." In an interview on NPR's World Cafe, aired December 15, 2006, Waits said 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:

<blockquote> 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."

An excerpt of the opening saxophone solo from "Small Change (Got Rained On with His Own .38)" was used for the opening of BBC Two's Moviedrome in 1988, its first season of screening cult films introduced by Alex Cox.

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:<blockquote>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.</blockquote>

Waits recorded the album in reaction to these hardships. This is evident in the pessimism and cynicism that pervade the record, 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."

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. It was alleged that the go-go dancer pictured is Cassandra Peterson, who portrayed the iconic Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. Peterson, however, says she's not sure of the authenticity of this claim, stating, "I can't say it's completely not me—I can't say it's not true—but I have absolutely no recollection of doing it, if it is true....I do not remember the '70s, for who-knows-what-all reasons. But anyway, it could be me. There is a possibility. But I just look and look and look at it and go, "It doesn't look exactly like me." I don't know. Maybe it is." Peterson now asserts it is not her on the cover. Apparently it was an LA showgirl who went by the name of Jinx, who worked at Jumbo's Clown Room.

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Critics gave Small Change generally favorable to highly positive reviews, many considering it on par with or superior to Waits' previous albums.

Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times praised the album, stating that Waits "has not only fulfilled the promise of his early work, but extended it in a way that makes him one of America's most valuable pop performers," and that "by refusing to stay in the safe mold of his first two albums, he enriched his art."

Carl Arrington of the Detroit Free Press praised Small Change as "another wheezy, wonderful collection by the reigning duke of down-and-out," noting that it features "more verbal hooks and turns in every song than most artists use in a career."

When asked in an interview with Mojo 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 to 1980), Waits replied: <blockquote> 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.</blockquote>

In 2000, Small Change was voted number 958 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums.

Sales

Small Change became Waits' first album to enter the Billboard 200, reaching No. 89, a peak he would not surpass until 1999's Mule Variations.

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Certifications

References

Further reading

  • MacLaren, Trevor, "Tom Waits: Small Change", 2004 March 2 All About Jazz.com link