Released September 1976
Recorded July 15, 1976 – July 29, 1976 at Wally Heider Recording, Hollywood, CA
Genre Jazz
Length 49:28
Label Asylum
Producer Bones Howe
Small Change is reportedly Tom Wait’s mental breakdown. As he described it in 1977 to Rolling Stone Magazine, in an article called “Smelling like a Brewery, Looking like a Tramp”, a lyric from his song “Panties and a G-string” (two o’clock club) [Small Change]:
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DM (1977): The final injustice came last spring in New Orleans when Roger McGuinn, Joan Baez, Kinky Friedman and some other members of the "Rolling Blunder Revue" as Waits termed Dylan's entourage, took over the stage at Ballinjax Club just before Waits was scheduled to begin his set. TW: "They got up there for an hour just before I was supposed to begin my set, Nobody even asked me; before I knew it, ****in' Roger McGuinn was up there playing guitar and singing and Joan Boaz and Kinky were singing. By the time I got onstage the audience was stoked. They were all lookin' around the room and ****. I don't need this crap - it was my show. I was drinkin' too much on top of everything else." (Source: "Smelling like a brewery, lookin' like a tramp". Rolling Stone: David McGee. January, 1977)
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It was this action that spurned rejection. Waits went off to Europe and soaked in a lifetime worth of whiskey and culture. What came from this was a rejection of his earlier sounds, which did include jazz and blues, but also relied heavily of folks and country and both previous albums had a lighter feel. The booze-soaked rejection featured on Small Change might be the first signs (in hindsight) of Waits’s downward decent into the dark underworld of much later albums.
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Of one song, his producer Bones Howerecalls when Waits first came to him with the song: ‘He said the most wonderful thing about writing that song. He went down and hung around on skid row in L.A. because he wanted to get stimulated for writing this material. He called me up and said, 'I went down to skid row ... I bought a pint of rye. In a brown paper bag.' I said, 'Oh really?'. 'Yeah - hunkered down, drank the pint of rye, went home, threw up, and wrote 'Tom Traubert's Blues [...] Every guy down there ... everyone I spoke to, a woman put him there.”’ – from the Wiki page
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Its not hard to imagine much of the album going in the same direction. For a man who’s most noted for heavy and depressing lyrics, Small Change packs some of the most brutal.
Invitation to the Blues most noteably:
“But she used to have a sugar daddy and a candy-apple Caddy,
And a bank account and everything, accustomed to the finer things
He probably left her for a socialite, and he didn't love 'cept at night,
And then he's drunk and never even told her that her cared
So they took the registration, and the car-keys and her shoes
And left her with an invitation to the blues”
Or
“But you can't take your eyes off her, get another cup of java,
It's just the way she pours it for you, joking with the customers
Mercy mercy, Mr. Percy, there ain't nothing back in Jersey
But a broken-down jalopy of a man I left behind
And the dream that I was chasing, and a battle with booze
And an open invitation to the blues”
While the album isn’t all dark - “I wish I was in New Orleans”, “The Piano’s been drinking”, and “Jitterbug Boy” are certainly less heavy – Small Change has a gritty immigrant feel due largely to the albums European influence, but American themes.
For me this album was always a sleeper. Its strength comes not from the immediacy of singles or powerful melodies (though there are tracks that do this), but to the enduring feel of the “Dear John” letter American life. Waits has always been a master navigator when it came to the ruthlessness of humanity. Small Change might signal his arrival at the top.