Small Change

The album featured famed drummer Shelly Manne, and was, like Waits’ previous albums, heavily jazz-influenced, with a lyrical style that owed influence to Raymond Chandler and Charles Bukowski as well as a vocal delivery influenced by Captain Beefheart, Dr John, Howlin’ Wolf, and Louis Armstrong.\[2\] The music for the most part consists of Waits’ hoarse, rough voice, set against a backdrop of piano, upright bass, drums and saxophone. Some tracks have a string section, whose sweet timbre is starkly contrasted to Waits’ voice.

In reaction to the hardships in his life at the time, Waits recorded Small Change (1976), which finds Waits in much more cynical and pessimistic mood lyrically than his previous albums, 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.

Own your own copy of this legendary album on vinyl.