Tom Waits - Small Change [Turquoise]

In July 1976, Tom Waits walked into Wally Heider's Studio 3 in Hollywood with a small jazz combo and a string section and cut his fourth album live, direct to two-track tape, in five days. Small Change came out that September and became his first record to reach the Billboard 200. Fifty years on it still sounds like last call at a bar that should have closed hours ago.

Producer Bones Howe surrounded Waits with players who could swing: Shelly Manne on drums, Jim Hughart on bass and Lew Tabackin on tenor saxophone, with strings arranged by Jerry Yester. Over that backdrop Waits delivers some of the best writing of his early years. "Tom Traubert's Blues" borrows its refrain from "Waltzing Matilda" and turns it into one of the great drinking laments, "Step Right Up" is a huckster's pitch at breakneck speed, and "The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)" is exactly as funny as its title.

Between the jokes sit "Invitation to the Blues," "Bad Liver and a Broken Heart" and the title track, portraits of people on the losing end that draw on classic jazz, Tin Pan Alley and beat poetry in equal measure. It is widely regarded as the high point of his Asylum years, and its success let him put together a touring band for the first time.

This limited 50th anniversary edition presents the album on 180-gram turquoise vinyl.