Tom Waits In The House: Three Jazzy Winners From The Noir Prince Of LA Pop

No assessment of the interchange between jazz music and the spoken word idiom in contemporary music can be complete without paying a visit to Small Change, the fourth studio album by singer and songwriter Tom Waits, released on September 21, 1976 on Asylum Records. It was recorded in July at the Wally Heider Recording Studio in Hollywood. Harry Bluestone, violin, concertmaster and strings, Jim Hughart, bass, Ed Lustgarten, cello, orchestra manager and strings, Shelly Manne, drums, Lew Tabackin, tenor saxophone, Tom Waits, vocals and piano, and Jerry Yester, arranger and conductor of the string section.

It is a typical album for the gritty LA-noir Waits, including such well-worn ballads and funky tunes as "Waltzing Matilda," and "The Piano has been Drinking," as well as persona poems. Overall, an enduring pop song compendium from a noir reprobate who presents a persona somewhere between Charles Bukowski, Mickey Spillane and Ratso Rizzo, all delivered with the gravelly, smoked-out drawling gravitas of a crooning ashtray.

Here are three jazzy tracks that really swing and are in full possession of the lyric/poetry novelistic portraiture that makes Tom Waits stand out in any police lineup.

Step Right Up

Lyrics

Step right up Step right up Step right up
Everyone's a winner bargains galore
That's right you too can be the proud owner of
The quality goes in before the name goes on

One tenth of a dollar One tenth of a dollar
We got service after the sale
How 'bout perfume
We got perfume

How 'bout an engagement ring
Somethin' for the little lady
Somethin' for the little lady
Somethin' for the little lady 3 for a dollar...

Turn up the volume!
You've heard it advertised
Don't hesitate, don't be caught with your drawers down
You just step right up
Step right up...

The One That Got Away

Lyrics

Well this gigolo's jumping salty, ain't no trade out on the streets,
Half past the unlucky, and the hawk's a front-row seat
Dressed in full orchestration, stage-door Johnny's got to pay,
And sent him home talking 'bout the one that got away

Small Change Got Rained On By His Own .38

Lyrics

Well small change got rained on with his own .38 and nobody flinched down by the arcade
and the marquise weren't weeping they went stark ravin' mad
and the cabbies were the only ones that really had it made
cause his cold trousers were twisted and the sirens high and shrill
and crumpled in his fist was a five dollar bill
and the naked mannikins with their cheshire grins
and the raconteurs and roustabouts said:
"buddy come on in cause the dreams ain't broken down here now. they're walkin' with a limp now that small change got rained on with his own .38"

This is the kind of art that keeps some folks from sinking into oblivion in the dead of urban night, and others wondering whether it's all real or run through a Hollywood B-Movie scriptwriter's sausage grinder.

Counterculturalist in the wilderness? Down and out wisdom boy? Pavement hustling Hollywood Boulevard two-bit Toulouse Lautrec fraud? Depends on your bias, I suppose. For me, at his best, Waits can be nearly as charming as Rickie Lee Jones, who always seems to wear it well. And more importantly, as a spoken word-music enthusiast, these are three decidedly jazzy tracks which really swing and are in full possession of the lyric/poetry novelistic portraiture that makes Waits stand out in any police lineup.