Track Listing

1. Tom Traubert's Blues
2. Step Right Up
3. Jitterbug Boy
4. I Wish I Was In New Orleans
5. Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)
6. Invitation To The Blues
7. Pasties And A G String
8. Bad Liver And A Broken Heart
9. One That Got Away
10. Small Change
11. I Can't Wait To Get Off Work

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2049 in Music
• Released on: 1999-10-01
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds

CD Description
Unquestionably the definitive recording of Waits' early period, SMALL CHANGE brings his beatnik/grifter/gruff, poetic piano man persona into sharp, defining focus. Waits' blues/jazz/'40s pop amalgam is at its most cohesive here, as he's backed by three West Coast jazz vets and an occasional (never overweening) string section. "Tom Traubert's Blues", later covered by Rod Stewart, is a milestone, and one of the greatest cry-in-your-beer tunes of all time. Waits plays the down-and-out, alcohol-ravaged troubadour to perfection here as well as on "Invitation to the Blues" and the devastating "Bad Liver and a Broken Heart", where one can almost smell the cheap whiskey on his breath.
It's not all misery, though. There's plenty of humor on the huckster/auctioneer rap of "Step Right Up" and the bad-gig nightmare of "The Piano Has Been Drinking [Not Me])". "The One That Got Away" and the titlecut continue the aural dimestore novel approach Waits beganearly in his career. Things end with a quiet, romantic gesture; the poignant, understated 4 AM wistfulness of "I Can't Wait to Get Off Work". If you buy only one Waits '70s album,it should be this one.

Customer Reviews

I wouldnt give 5 stars to many albums!
I have listened to tom waits since I was a kid, (which I have my dad to thank for), and only really recently bought some of his stuff my self. However I believe that it is not too naïve of me to say that this really is one of the finest albums there is. From the opening tracks of “Tom Traubert’s Blues” and “Step Right Up” (my dads favourite), the album is decorated with melody and blues. However my favourites are the slightly insane: “The piano has been drinking (not me)” and “Pasties and a G-String” where I think his genius is most evident. Now don’t get me wrong I am by no means of the imagination any “Tom Waits” expert (hey I am only 20), though I do know great music when I hear it, and there are very, very few albums that I would give 5 stars in any kind or rating. However this has always been one of my favourites and is easily worthy of a 5 star rating. There isn’t really a great deal else that can be said without listening to the album for your self, but worth mentioning is that Waits is one of the few artist out there who has been (and still is) recognised for his talent rather than his “commercial appeal”, and for which reason, in my mind, has never sold out.

The Best Songwriter's Album In The World...Ever!
"Small Change", in my opinion, is the finest addition to the Tom Waits cannon, and the best example I can think of of an album that consistently showcases brilliant songwriting. The quality never wavers, and the tone is more personal than on many other Waits albums. The result is a bar-stool confessional, life as seen through the whisky glass; hard luck stories told for anybody who cares to listen...all to a soundtrack that is both bluesy, jazzy, and beatnik-funky. Wait's pre-eminence as a writer has long earned him kudos from more prominent artists, and the classic opener on this album ("Tom Traubert's Blues") gave Rod Stewart (a confirmed Waits fan) an unlikely chart hit a few years back. This is a sorry, booze-soaked tale of unrequited love, underpinned by a lush, stringed arrangement that lends it a festive air, which wouldn't seem out of place on Heart Attack and Vine. Next up is the beat-poet satire on the mania of commerce that is "Step Right Up"...here Waits adopts the voice of a "closing down, everything must go" salesperson of irrelevant specificity - the song's all-embracing intentions are brilliantly inscribed with a wonderfully timed bit of scat singing as Waits recites "that's right you too can be the proud owner of this quality hoosay boosing boosong..!!" Classic. Waits wouldn't look out of place in the company of the contemporary literati. "Jitterbug Boy" is another boozy confessional, with Waits's down-on-his-luck narrator sounding as though he'd had a few too many before collaring a bar neighbour to spew out some unlikely stories to ("once upon a time I was in showbiz too..")...a similar tone but possibly even more pathetic (and beautiful sounding) lament arrives later with "Bad liver and a broken heart". In this, another alcoholic, sorry tale of unrequited love, Waits muses on the girl who "tore him apart", and in just a couple of pointed metaphors conveys a girl to die for: "she was sharp as a razor, and soft as a prayer." All the songs on this album are worth a mention. "The piano has been drinking" (not me!) is an hilarious description of a shabby late night boozer in a series of compressed metaphors ("the spotlight looks like a prizon break") in which the singer subtly suggests that maybe he is as lurid as everything else about the place; and yet comes out of it engagingly qualified in a turn of phrase as comic as it is acerbic ("the owner is a mental midget with the IQ of a fencepost".) This is a truly great album, at turns moving, funny, voyeuristic (witness the leering narrator of the album's second beat poem, "Pasties and a G-String", in which he confesses "I'm getting harder than Chinese Algebra" whilst ogling over strippers in a - you've guessed it - late night joint.) Overall, "Small Change" is an ingeniously written, booze-soaked love-poem to the late night wino life of the big American cities - by the unlikeliest crooner of them all.

Waits at his best
I have been a Tom Waits fan for many years, and for me Small Change marks the peak of his talent. Despite being a gifted pianist and singer, Tom always says that words are his main instrument, and you have only to listen to "Tom Trauberts Blues" or "I Wish I was in New Orleans" to realise this is the case.

This album is a little known classic, and will wring every emotion from your heart as you listen to it.