SMALL CHANGE by Tom Waits to Get 50th Anniversary Vinyl Re-Issue
The album features Tom Traubert's Blues, Step Right Up and The Piano Has Been Drinking.
Records will release a new vinyl re-issue of Tom Waits' SMALL CHANGE on October 2, marking fifty years since the album's original release. The fourth studio album from Waits, SMALL CHANGE blends elements of the American songbook, jazz, beat poetry and storytelling, and includes tracks such as Tom Traubert's Blues, Step Right Up and The Piano Has Been Drinking. The record is widely regarded as a high point of Waits' output during the 1970s and the point at which his singing voice reached its now-familiar maturity.
Upon the album's original release in the fall of 1976, Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times declared: [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.' In a 1976 interview following the release of his third album, Waits reflected on the storytelling roots behind his evolving style, tracing his songs back to his days working the door at a local nightclub and eavesdropping in late-night diners:
'I got a job as doorman at a night club in L.A., and I listened to all the acts from the door. I heard bluegrass, comics, folk singers, string bands. At the same time, I was picking up people's conversations in all-night coffee shops—ambulance drivers, cabdrivers, street sweepers. I did research there as an evening curator, and I started writing—gingerly. I thought at some point I'd like to forge it all into something meaningful and give it dignity.'
Here is a much-loved clip of Waits performing 'The Piano Has Been Drinking' on Martin Mull's legendary late 70s TV show Fernwood Tonight:
Included in Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Song Writers of All Time and a 2011 inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Waits is a legendary artist who explored the full canon of American and European songwriting - from folk to jazz to blues and gospel to cabaret and spoken word - all in service of his experience of the human condition from every rung of the ladder. He has a voice and eye so singular that 'Waitsian' has become an adjective used by critics and dictionaries to describe his aesthetic and style.
Last month Waits shared 'The Fly', a spoken word track in which Waits wields his whipsaw humor in this satirical ode to the common housefly. The track expresses a begrudging admiration for the brief unsung life of the insect: 'You have no house, well you have mine / You have no real friends, stay away from the wine / House fly go to sleep say goodbye, no one will weep when you die.'
Waits, a 2011 inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and a name included on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time, recently shared a spoken word track titled The Fly.
Photo Credit: Ralph Fales
Photo Credit: Ralph Fales
