Small Change

by Tom Waits

Small Change cover art
  • Type: Album
  • Released: 21 September 1976
  • Label: Asylum
  • Country: United States
  • Length: 49:57
  • Community rating: 4.1/5 from 10 ratings

Album Notes & Community Reviews

Featuring his famously gruff, gravelly vocal delivery fully realized for the first time, Tom Waits's 'Small Change' is a sublime cinematic exploration of late-night Americana. Backed by sweeping strings and smoky jazz instrumentation, the album is a wonderfully poetic, deeply nocturnal piano-blues masterpiece steeped in bittersweet urban romanticism, alcohol, and dark humor.

Genres

Descriptors: alcohol, piano, male-vocals, crooning, bluesy, storytelling

Tracklist

  1. Tom Traubert's Blues (Four Sheets To The Wind In Copenhagen) (6:38)
  2. Step Right Up (5:43)
  3. Jitterbug Boy (Sharing A Curbstone With Chuck E. Weiss, Robert Marchese, Paul Body and The Mug and Artie) (3:43)
  4. I Wish I Was In New Orleans (In The Ninth Ward) (4:53)
  5. The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me) (An Evening With Pete King) (3:40)
  6. Invitation To The Blues (5:24)
  7. Pasties And A G-String (At The Two O'Clock Club) (2:32)
  8. Bad Liver And A Broken Heart (In Lowell) (4:49)
  9. The One That Got Away (4:07)
  10. Small Change (Got Rained On With His Own .38) (5:07)
  11. I Can't Wait To Get Off Work (And See My Baby On Montgomery Avenue) (3:17)

Credits

  • Tom Waits - primary artist, vocals, piano, written-by
  • Jerry Yester - arranged by [string section], conductor [string section conducted by]
  • Jim Hughart - bass
  • Edgar Lustgarten - cello [celli], management [orchestra manager]
  • Jesse Ehrlich - cello [celli]
  • Kathleen Lustgarten - cello [celli]
  • Ray Kelley - cello [celli]
  • Harry Bluestone - concertmaster, violin
  • Cal Schenkel - design
  • Shelly Manne - drums
  • Bill Broms - engineer [2nd engineers]
  • Geoff Howe - engineer [2nd engineers]
  • Bones Howe - engineer [engineered by], producer [production and sound]
  • Terry Dunavan - mastered by [disc mastering]
  • Bruce Weber - photography by [back cover photography]
  • Joel Brodsky - photography by [cover photography]
  • Lew Tabackin - tenor saxophone [tenor sax]
  • Allan Harshman - viola
  • David Schwartz - viola
  • Samuel Boghossian - viola
  • Alfred Lustgarten - violin
  • George Kast - violin
  • Israel Baker - violin
  • Marvin Limonick - violin
  • Murray Adler - violin
  • Nathan Kaproff - violin
  • Nathan Ross - violin
  • Sheldon Sanov - violin
  • Dayton “Bones” Howe - producer

More from Tom Waits: full discography