TomWaitsAWeek | Tom Waits – Nighthawks at the Diner (1975, US)
Today’s spotlight is on number 525 on The List [1001otheralbums.com], submitted by swordgeek.
This past weekend, the absolutely iconic Tom Waits turned 75 years young. While honoring Waits’ birthday by sharing a few song and video links, @derthomas and I decided this week would be a good time to listen through Waits’ discography, in chronological order. And then, seeing as we have three of his albums on The List that have yet to be blogged about here, I decided to defer the spotlights I already had lined up to make room for a Waits-only spotlight week. Our rough plan is to go through about four (mostly) studio albums per day, and the albums we have on The List line up fairly nicely with that schedule to have spotlights every other day. And so, for anyone who would like to join us in #TomWaitsAWeek, see the footnote1 for the rough listening schedule, use the hashtag to toot your thoughts on the albums to the Fediverse, and continue reading.
Each of the three Tom Waits albums we have on The List are essentially from different eras in Waits’ evolution as an artist, which gives us a neat way to delve into this multifaceted performer. The earliest we have on The List is Waits’ third album (and so, the third we’re listening to today!1). Waits’ first, the beautiful not quite jazz/not quite folk sometimes even country rock Closing Time, was released in 1973, when Waits was 23. That Waits really wanted that album to be more firmly in the jazz genre likely informs the move to the jazzier blues sound of his next, The Heart of Saturday Night (1974), and then culminates in the bluesy beat poetry/story-driven jazz of Nighthawks at the Diner, a sound which Waits will then continue to hone and morph going forward.
If you think you’re familiar with Waits but not necessarily with all his eras, this is probably the first album in his discography you might say clearly contains the quintessence of Tom Waits, the je ne sais quoi that makes Tom Waits Tom Waits. It’s an interesting not-technically live live album, recorded in a studio but in front of a small audience, with the (very successful) attempt to make it sound like it was recorded in a jazz club. Whether it is or isn’t live, the set-up results in the first of the first three albums to fully capture and showcase the showmanship of Waits and his fantastic troubadour method that combines spoken word and singing, delivered with a voice just starting to show what will be – in his ripe age of 25-going-on-65 – Waits’ signature graveltas.2 I wish I could’ve been at this “show”. It’s no wonder that this album is on the official 1001 list, and why it had to be duplicated on ours.
The last album on our listening schedule for today, Small Change (1976), continues the jazzy vibes of Nighthawks, with Waits’ whisky-soaked gravelly voice and penchant for the most melancholic storytelling now fully formed, and was the most commercially successful album of Waits’ up to that point. But you won’t believe what he does next!…or, maybe you will, lol. At any rate, by the end of tomorrow’s listening schedule, we’ll encounter the result of Waits meeting someone who really amps up the Waits quintessence and sets him down a much more experimental road (and one that is easier on the liver). We’ll meet here again on Wednesday to take a look at one of those first experimental albums, indeed the most voted for album on The List.
Until then, if your schedule allows it, don’t wait to listen to Waits!
[ The cover art is a photo of a diner full of people taken from outside, with the artist sitting at one of the tables and looking out the window at the camera. He's wearing a porkpie hat, a suit jacket, and button up shirt, and is holding a cigarette in his right hand. The artist's name is in yellow font at the top center, and the album name is in smaller font underneath.] [1001otheralbums.com]1For those wanting to listen through the discography with us, here is the schedule we’re using, of studio albums plus the Orphans box set (any live/soundtrack/etc. albums are extracurricular!): Monday – Closing Time, The Heart of Saturday Night, Nighthawks at the Diner, Small Change; Tuesday – Foreign Affairs, Blue Valentine, Heartattack and Vine, Swordfishtrombones; Wednesday – Rain Dogs, Franks Wild Years, Bone Machine, The Black Rider; Thursday – Mule Variations, Alice, Blood Money, Real Gone; Friday – Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards, Bad as Me
2Yes, I just made that word up.