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This is an utterly, utterly sublime recording.

When I first bought it on vinyl in my early twenties, I’d come to Waits via two rather odd poles of his output, namely  Closing Time , his rather sweet and innocent sounding debut, and  Big Time , a mostly live recording (there was also an oddball concert movie of the the same name, documenting his rather different post  Swordfishtrombones  sound). Around the same time I also bought  Small Change , and these two records – Small Change and Blue Valentines, that is – were on heavy rotation for years after that, and remain solid favourites to this day.

Having done several albums with the brilliant rhythm section team of Jim Hughart on bass, and Shelly Manne on drums, Waits decided to change up the groove, so to speak. Having worked, in the studio at least, with a fairly stable team of players for several years, he goes for more of a pick-up band vibe, using several combinations of players on the one album. Getting a bit more raw, bluesy and electric, he brings in electric bass and keys, the latter a real rarity in most of his recorded output (numerous exceptions to this general rule can be found, but it still remains true that he usually prefers an acoustic piano).

Swapping his folkster’s acoustic steel-string guitar for a hollow bodied jazz type electric guitar, and bringing in such R&B scenester sidemen as guitarist Harold Bautista and bassist Scott Edwards, and funky jazzers like Charles Kynard on keys, and Chip White on drums – nearly all black ‘cats’, incidentally (does this really make any odds?*) – Waits thereby getting a much grittier urban sound than he’d previously gone for.

There’s a great photo, taken by Michael Dobo in 1975, of Waits on a tour bus, reading  Last Exit to Brooklyn , and, on recordings like Blue Valentine and  Heartattack And Vine  you can really hear that influence. Waits revels in stories of sleazy urban low-life (even West Side Story’s ‘Somewhere’ is a brief romantic respite from an otherwise fairly bleak tale of gangland strife, famously reworking Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, then there’s ‘Red Shoes By The Drugstore’ and ‘Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis’, in which he relates tales of minor hoodlum loserdom, whilst ‘Wrong Side Of The road’ and ‘Whistlin’ Past The Graveyard’ approach the panegyric in celebrating the mythical delinquent outlaw outsider), and, both here and on Vine, the more sordid end of that world, with numerous songs dealing in violence and death (‘Romeo Is Bleeding’, ‘$29.00’, and ‘A Sweet Little Bullet From A Pretty Blue Gun’).

The whole album is brilliant, but personal favourites include the sleazy groove of ‘Romeo Is Bleeding’, whose rhythm section benefits from congas, a sizzle ride cymbal, and one of the best reverb treated cross-stick snares I’ve ever heard recorded, not to mention Kynard’s extremely funky keys work. In ways this harks back to Waits’ raps of earlier years – in essence it’s a recitation with a bit of a chorus – but it’s reached a point where the musical backdrops have grown in sophistication. Then there’s strings and vocal feature (and a rare instance of Waits recording someone else’s composition), ‘Somewhere’, from  West Side Story , with the ever reliable Bob Alcivar, who added so much to so many of Waits’ best recordings, working his magic to stunning effect: it’s just Waits gravelly voice and the phenomenally well arranged and recorded strings, and it packs a real punch, far better than any classical or stage recordings of Bernstein’s music I’ve ever heard.

And then, leaving aside ‘Somewhere’, as it’s not a Waits original, there are the two really beautiful emotionally wrought ballads: ‘Kentucky Avenue’, the only solo piano ballad (albeit there are some strings towards the end) which can reduce boulders to tears, and the fabulous title track, which Waits delivers more-or-less solo, except for a great bluesy electric guitar solo from Ray Crawford (Crawford was originally a reeds player, which explains why his phrasing as a guitar player is so exquisite and expressive). Tom Waits was, and no doubt still is, one unbelievably cool cat, and this music drips soul. Not bad for a white guy! When I first owned the album, I spent ages trying to learn and reproduce ‘Blue Valentines’: the guitar part is pretty simple in most respects, so copping the chords and arrangement wasn’t hard, but what I could never nail satisfactorily was the nuanced rhythm Waits brings to it, and then there’s that voice.

I mostly only review stuff I really like, so I often give five stars. This album tho’, if I could only give it ten, it really is that good!

* I do think it’s a deliberate move, on Waits’ part, to try and get a grittier, rootsier urban feel; what James Brown and others might call ‘on across the other side of the tracks’, so to speak.

Capping a fabulous run of albums that featured a fairly stable team of jazzers, whilst this isn’t the final instalment of Waits’ love affair with his jazzy Tin Pan Alley persona (that was to come in the form of the album that is both the sound track to a Coppola movie, and a standalone masterpiece –  One From The Heart  – which was itself inspired by a track from this album) it was the last in a consecutive string of releases built around the relatively stable team of bassist Jim Hughart and the incomparable Shelly Manne, on drums. Whilst Howe and Alcivar remained in the Waits orbit for a little longer, Hughart and Manne would only make the one return (for the aforementioned ‘One From The Heart’), so this is really the document of the end of an era in the Waits story, the next chapter destined to be more raw, bluesy and electric, with albums like  Blue Valentines  and  Heartattack And Vine .

As well as ending an era of collaboration, it also finds Waits’ partnership with arranger Bob Alcivar hitting a kind of cinematic peak (again, a style to be notably if somewhat differently reprised on ‘One From The Heart’). Indeed, the liner notes describe the recording as “A Mr Bones Production / Tom waits: Piano & Vocals / Co-Starring Bette Midler / With this great supporting cast … [and then lists the band]”. The album begins with a beautiful little programmatic opener, ‘Cinny’s Waltz’, in which Alcivar’s lush but minimal arrangement turns a very small musical nugget from Waits into a beautifully evocative vignette, leading in turn into the absolutely gorgeous melancholy piano ballad ‘Muriel’. Trumpeter Jack Sheldon takes the lead at the end of ‘Cinny’s Waltz’, and his breathy tone is perfect, sax player Frank Vicari picking up the muscial baton for ‘Muriel’, with an equally soft, breathy tone.

Track three, a duet with Bette Midler called ‘I Never Talk To Strangers’ (in the liner notes Waits enthuses ‘Bette, your absolutely colossal’!) is the very track that inspired Coppola (who apparently discovered Waits through his sons enthusiasm for him) to craft a whole film around the musical moods that Waits generated. I actually think the pairing of Crystal Gayle and Waits, for OFTH, is actually more musically successful than this number, which is nonetheless both very good and very endearing. It’s worth mentioning at this point the brilliant back and white photography of George Hurrell, which adorns the record, adding an expressionistic noir vibe to it’s filmic associations. In some of these pics Waits is the epitome of studied cool, but there’s one absolutely priceless shot, in which he looks almost freakish, head cocked back, eyes-closed, a half-smoked ciggy mid-mouth, and a hairy chest peeking through the skid-row suit. But that’s the thing: Waits probably chose that pic himself, showing he’s the compete deal, a kind of surreal lounge singer, his spidery double jointed fingers bent back, and his oily/greased shaggy coiffure a riot of curls that almost seems to express his inner wildness.

‘Jack And Neal’ is another celebration of things ‘beat’, literally telling a tale of Kerouac and Cassady on the road, with all the accoutrements, Mexicans, girls, benzedrine, jazz and booze. This is followed by the boozy bar room lullaby to old friends long missed, ‘Sight For Sore Eyes’, and that wrapped up side one, in vinyl days of yore. You’d then flip the platter, and get the ultra-cinematic ‘Potter’s Field’. Like ‘Jack & Neal’ this is in essence a recitative rap, a spoken word piece. But whereas the latter becomes a funky slinky double-bass lead jazz number, heavy on rambunctious rhythm, ‘Potter’s Field’, still snaking across sinuous upright bass, is an altogether moodier affair, with spooky sounds from the orchestra. Here it’s worth pausing to note just how stupendously brilliant these recordings are: this was all laid down direct to two track. That’s right, live, in one take, with the whole orchestra! The excellent music technology magazine Sound On Sound ran a feature on ‘Bones’ Howe in which he discussed their working methods. Essentially they went for the purest simplest, most ‘real’ approach. None of this ‘we’ll fix it in the mix’ nonsense that the digital age has made so ubiquitous (and on which, I must confess, I’m very dependent).

Next up comes the beyond-words-brilliance of ‘Burma Shave’, a number that had evolved from a spoken word piece. If you ever get the chance to see Waits’ Austin City Limits performance (a superb film of a brilliant concert, one of the best I’ve ever seen, that really should be made commercially available, preferably remastered and in high-definition) from around this time you’ll hear the song in development, when it was recited over a cycle round the first four chords of ‘Summertime’, brilliant in it’s own way, but not as fabulous as the fully realised album version. Jobim’s wonderful ‘Agua De Marcos’ is an example of sublime poetry set to simple cyclical music, very different but equally magical, and I think Waits lyrics frequently have a similarly high level of poetic richness and density that makes them almost synaesthetic. I believe some have called this Waits most underrated album, and, as I write this, listening to the album, I’m incline to agree. It’s chock-full of jaw-dropping brilliance… pure magic.

‘Barber Shop’ turns Waits lyrical talents in a more humorous kaleidoscopic direction, and is a close cousin to ‘Jack & Neal’ musically, with double bass and drums dominating the music, grooving funkily, Shelly Manne’s beautifully subtle nuanced touch on the drums particularly worthy of note. And finally Tom gets his ticket and sails off on the title-track ‘Foreign Affair’, a slice of louche sophistication, with very rich jazzy chordal voicings, and a sensibility that mixes the best of Tin Pan Alley with an almost European Cabaret-esque vibe, particularly when what sounds like an accordion joins in towards the end. Totally brilliant, this might in fact be one of Waits most consistently top-notch records. And given how good his catalogue is, that’s really saying something.

I love everything about this album, even the trashy cover. And on the back there’s a fabulous black and white pic of Waits smoking Lucky Strikes, taken by Bruce Weber (director of the fabulous Chet Baker biopic  Let’s Get Lost ), that’s shameful in it’s power to make impressionable youths want to take up smoking. I should know, I fell under the spell.

I’m quite proud to say I’m not amongst those whose favourite-ever Waits song is ‘Tom Traubert’s Blues’. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good ‘un. I mean, this is Tom Waits after all, and at the very peak of his powers. But I’ve always found it slightly odd that so much hyperbole has been expended on this particular track. Personally I prefer the understated melancholic Tin Pan Alley sophistication of ‘Invitation To The Blues’, or ‘Bad Liver And A Broken Heart’. And those are just tracks I prefer over TTB from this album, it certainly doesn’t make my top ten Waits’ tunes list, it’s not even close.

‘Step Right Up’ and ‘Pasties and a G-String’ are from the more upbeat end of his spoken word raps, both highly entertaining. I love how, in the former, the band are so much into it that one of them lets out a howl at one point. I don’t know this for sure, but I believe it’s probably ace drummer Shelly Manne. Waits must’ve had some kind of mojo-inducing effect on drummers (he certainly does on me, and I’m a drummer!), as he elicited some rare vocal harmonies from John Seiter on  Closing Time .

Whilst the quality of tunes isn’t 100% even, as with most Waits albums from this period, it’s nonetheless the combined package that makes the whole so effective. Sure there are standout tracks, but nothing here is mere filler (if some might think tracks like ‘I Wish I Was In New Orleans’, ‘The Piano Has Been Drinking’, or ‘Pastries And A G-String’, could be called filler – outrageous! – then I don’t care, it’d be some of the damned finest filler I ever heard!), and with stories as compelling as ‘The One that Got Away’ and ‘Small Change’, and songs as enchanting as ‘Jitterbug Boy’… It’s just a magical slice of something that seems to exist both outside of time, and yet be very much an elusively will’o’the wisp like vintage moment, long gone by, but captured here for posterity, and our delight.

The quality of lost melancholy yearning that Waits captures so well was a speciality of his hero Kerouac, who was expert at it, right from his first novel, the brilliant  The Town and the City , through to more mature and experimental books like the magnificent  Doctor Sax . And indeed, Waits nods to his erstwhile mentor in the subtitle to the song ‘Bad Liver And A Broken Heart (In Lowell)’. This is Waits in his quintessential beat mode, and he does it unbelievably well. People are divided about whether he was genuine, or putting it on. Although Waits has said himself you dont have to have killed to write a murder story, nevertheless, I don’t think anyone can really act this well without genuinely becoming the character they have been inhabiting so deeply.

Anyway, in conclusion: sublime and essential.

The 1970s, decade of the prog rock gatefold double-album, finds Tom getting in on the extended format action, but, as you’d expect, in his own inimitable way.

With only two – albeit utterly brilliant – studio albums under his belt, Waits was already heavily into paying his dues on the live circuit, and his shows were justly becoming something of a cult phenomenon, on account of three main factors: first of all his fabulous music; but, just as importantly, in terms of why his third release came out as a double live album, are the related facets of, secondly, his distinct charismatic persona and stage presence; and third, related to the latter, his marvellous way with words, or gift of the gab.

The effect of some pretty oddball and occasionally harsh live experiences, being inappropriately paired with everything from Vaudeville acts, or (not far from vaudeville, but some way off to the left of everything) with label mate Frank Zappa, had been to make Waits dig deeper into his beatnik persona, almost as a defensive shell. But it’s undoubtedly his pure gift for language, storytelling, and, ultimately, strange as it may sound, for someone so resolutely independent, showmanship, that lie behind this strange format for a third release.

Ever sensitive to bringing out the best in Waits, producer ‘Bones’ Howe was instrumental in making the recording happen, hiring an appropriate venue, and ensuring the right kind of crowd was on hand. Backed by a fabulous jazz band, Waits and co. deliver an evening’s worth of musical and lyrical magic, Waits mining his rich seam of imaginative and frequently very humorous storytelling to excellent effect.

There are so many great tracks, I won’t list them all; amongst my personal favourites are the moody cyclic semi-recitative ‘Upon A Foggy Night’, with Waits favouring 13ths and 7#5 chord voicings, giving the number a distinctly jazzy vibe, despite being delivered on a folk-style steel string acoustic guitar, and, whilst covers are something of a rarity in the Waits canon, it’s typical that when he does pick one, it’s an interesting and unusual choice; here it’s a sublimely evocative reading of country singer Red Sorvine’s ‘Big Joe & Phantom 309’, a tale of a saintly supernatural trucker, no less!

Hardcore fans of Waits will no doubt know that there are huge amounts of live Waits bootlegs out there, spanning his entire career, and of widely varied recording quality, so, retrospectively it was all the more prescient of Howe to ensure that a document of Waits in live and garrulous mode was captured in hi-fidelity, and we all owe him a debt of gratitude on that account. With more character than a convention of charisma competition winners, and a line in patter that’s got to be heard to be appreciated, this is a brilliant document of Waits doing his thing live: essential listening!

Having found the perfect foil for this point in his career, in jazz drummer-turned-producer ‘Bones’ Howe, Waits builds solidly on the promise of his debut, Closing Time , still drawing on the pool of songs he had in his bag before he secured a deal, but also adding to his repertoire.

Amongst the best tracks is the title number, in which Waits voice and guitar are ably complemented by the sinuous serpentine bass of Jim Hughart, traffic and other incidental noises adding to the evocative effect. I believe the fabulous bass part may have evolved when Waits was working with bassist Bill Plummer, and Tom’s guitar part, in drop-D tuning, is the essence of Waits as self-accompanist: it seems, indeed it is in some ways, very simple, but it’s also absolutely perfect. And that’s not so easy! Over the span of his career Waits turns in some truly sublime turns on piano, guitar and vocals, not to mention songwriting, and it’s all done with understated panache. He’s not a virtuoso, technically speaking, in any of these departments, and yet he gets more emotion and meaning across than many a technician could possibly achieve. That’s the ‘art’ part of the deal, it’s about feel, and is almost magical.

Amongst the stellar sidemen Howe brought Waits together with, not only are the notable rhythm team of bassist Jim Hughart and drummers Bill Goodwin or Shelly Manne, worthy of special mention, so to is arranger Bob Alcivar, whose lush cinematic arrangements work perfectly with Waits’ sophisticatedly sleazy material. Trumpeter Jack Sheldon and sax players Pete Christlieb and Frank Vicari, also help bring the jazz dimension of Waits at this time into sparkling 3-D. Waits would continue to work with these guys to great effect over a number of years, releasing some music that is, in my view, amongst the greatest committed to wax in the latter part of the 20th century.

The material is of a very high standard throughout, although it’s not all even. Some pieces flesh out spoken word raps that he was delivering in his early gigging days, often accompanied only by his own toe-tapping and finger-popping. On wax, such numbers as ‘Diamonds On My Windshield’ and ‘Ghosts of Saturday night’ make the transition with admirable aplomb. Waits develops the bluesier side begun with ‘Virginia Avenue’ and ‘Ice Cream Man’, with the fabulous ‘New Coat Of paint’, a rarity in the Waits cannon for the use of the rich tremolo Rhodes (did Waits play this? no other keys player is credited), ‘Semi-Suite’, ‘Fumblin’ With The Blues’ and ‘Depot, Depot’.

His maudlin melancholy, replete with honeyed strings courtesy of Alcivar, finds expression in ‘San Diego Serenade’, the more minimal title track, ‘Please Call me Baby’, and ‘Drunk On The Moon’, this last of which goes into an out and out jazzy swing section for sax and trumpet solo sections, before resuming the more downbeat song. Kerouac experimented with mixing his words with music, and his writing was itself influenced by the jazz music and life, but Waits brings the two together more successfully. This is the Waits that some critics, and Waits himself, seem keen to distance themselves from: the boozy romantic barfly. Sure, it can seem ripe for parody, and indeed, some, including Waits himself, worried that this was where he was headed, hence a later-career shift in direction. But for me this is, for all it’s knowingly self-aware louche cleverness, disarmingly innocent and beguiling. In short, I love it: highly recommended.

Here’s the first in a series of archival reviews of mine. This particular little series will cover ‘early’ Tom Waits, my favourite era from his now very long career.

As will readily be apparent, if you read on, I really dig this album. Tom is young and sweet sounding here, not yet the rasping fag and booze addled Beat, nor the boho-carni-freak of later or more recent years.

I personally think his entire output from this recording to Swordfishtrombones is nigh on perfect, and, for someone like me, it’s all essential soul-food listening. And each album is different, albeit there are threads that run through them all.

Waits’ wife Kathleen Brennan apparently came up with the term ‘grim reapers and grand weepers’ to describe two of the many faces Waits has commonly chosen to show in later years, and, of the two, most of the material from the early albums leans towards the ‘grand weepers’ side of that pairing. And that’s how I like it!

Produced by the maverick producer and musician Jerry Yester, who’s more associated with the roots-folk and psychedelic tinged sounds of 60s hippie-dom, this is something of an oddball or unusual album within the Waits canon. Given that, in many respects, he kept mining similar veins for some years to come, it’s a little tricky to pin down exactly why that is. It’s definitely something to do with the gentleness and soft innocence of his voice, especially in contrast to how that voice evolved, but it’s also in the unique sonic chemistry that the album has, even though later recording will revisit similar genre-based sounds, ranging from jazz, blues and folk, to country, and Tin Pan Alley style songs.

For a debut album it is, frankly, simply stunning – loaded with gems like ‘Ol 55’, ‘I Hope That I Don’t Fall In Love With You’, and ‘Rosie’, even the lesser tracks are still superb – and, albeit that they’re very different characters, it reminds me of Joni Mitchell’s debut, which, although ostensibly more of a fit with the times it was released in, is actually also very unique and personal. People pegged Joni as a folkster, and she saw herself as a composer. In a similar way, Tom is an artist, and that’s why, even though he long ago turned off the road of straight ahead boho-romance – the aspect of his work I’ve always loved the most – he remains a compelling figure.

Some of my personal favourites on this recording include the maudlin piano driven ‘Midnight Lullaby’, with the beautiful muted trumpet of either Tony Terran or Delbert Bennett (not sure who it is!), and the unholy trinity that ends the album, ‘Little Trip To Heaven (On The Wings Of Your Love)’ – the first of a long series of excellent tracks with long names using parentheses, that reaches it’s apotheosis on the Small Change album, with tracks like ‘Jitterbug Boy (Sharing a Curbstone with Chuck E. Weiss, Robert Marchese, Paul Body and The Mug and Artie)’, and ‘I Can’t Wait to Get Off Work (And See My Baby on Montgomery Avenue)’ – ‘Grapefruit Moon’, and ‘Closing Time’.

The musicians, mostly associates of Yester, perform the material with a magical sympathy and affinity that belies the fact that the band was, in essence, a pick-up outfit. This said, drummer John Seiter and upright bassist Bill Plummer had been playing together for six months prior to the recording, possibly with Yester’s band Rosebud, which had recently come to an end, but I’m not sure about this. But given how different the music they were playing elsewhere was, they rise to Waits muse with real verve and grace. And, interestingly, so does artist Cal Schenkel, better known for his work on Zappa’s record covers. Here he turns in a picture perfect evocation of Waits as the last to leave, as it comes to closing time.

According to Jerry Yester, quoted by Barney Hoskyns in his excellent biography of Waits, Lowside of the Road , there was an awed silence at the end of a take of the instrumental track ‘Closing Time’, that gives the album its name: ‘That was absolutely the most magical session I’ve ever been involved with,’ Yester recalls, ‘at the end of it no one spoke for what felt like five minutes, either in the booth or out in the room. No one budged. Nobody wanted that moment to end.’ Yep, I know that feeling, I’ve had it often enough listening to many Waits records, not least of which is this.

If you’re as big a Waits nut as I am, you might have some of his live bootlegs, and you might notice that, whilst numerous tracks from this album make the occasional appearance in his live repertoire, the achingly beautiful ‘Closing Time’ itself is a rarity. The only instance I know of being for the BBC in 1979. In a way the rarity of it makes it even more special. And I think that is perhaps a fitting epitaph to the recording itself.