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Tom Waits: Small Change

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Elektra Entertainment
Released: 1976
Time:
 49:28
Category: Progressive Rock
Producer(s): Bones Howe
Rating: *********. (9/10)
Media type: CD
Web address: www.anti.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2002.05.03
Price in €: 10,99



 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Tom Traubert's Blues (T.Waits) - 6:40
[2] Step Right Up (T.Waits) - 5:39
[3] Jitterbug Boy (T.Waits) - 3:41
[4] I Wish I Was in New Orleans (T.Waits) - 4:50
[5] The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me) (T.Waits) - 3:37
[6] Invitation to the Blues (T.Waits) - 5:20
[7] Pasties and a G-String (T.Waits) - 2:32
[8] Bad Liver and a Broken Heart (T.Waits) - 4:46
[9] The One That Got Away (T.Waits) - 4:00
[10] Small Change (T.Waits) - 5:03
[11] I Can't Wait to Get off Work (T.Waits) - 3:20

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


TOM WAITS - Guitar, Piano, Vocals

SHELLY MANNE - Drums
LEW TABACKIN - Saxophone, Tenor Saxophone
JIM HUGHART - Bass

JERRY YESTER - Conductor, String Arrangements
HARRY BLUESTONE - Violin, Concert Master
DAVID SCHWARTZ - Viola
MURRAY ADLER - Violin
ISRAEL BAKER - Violin
SAMUEL BOGHOSSIan - Viola
JESSE EHRLICH - Cello
ALLAN HARSHMAN - Viola
NATHAN KAPROFF - Violin
GEORGE KAST - Violin
MARVIN LIMONICK - Violin
ALFRED LUSTGARTEN - Violin
RAY KELLEY - Cello
EDGAR LUSTGARTEN - Cello
KATHLEEN LUSTGARTER - Cello
NATHAN ROSS - Violin
SHELDON SANOV - Violin
SAM BOHOSSIAN - Viola

BONES HOWE - Engineer
GEOFF HOWE - Engineer
BILL BROMS - Engineer
STEPHEN INNOCE - Mastering
TERRY DUNAVAN - Mastering
CAL SCHENKEL - Design
JOEL BRODSKY - Photography
BRUCE WEBER - Photography

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


1976 CD Elektra/Asylum 7559-60612-2
1976 CD Asylum 1078-2
1976 CS Asylum TC5-1078



The fourth release in Tom Waits' series of skid-row travelogues, Small Change proved to be the archetypal album of his '70s work. A jazz trio comprising tenor sax player Lew Tabackin, bassist Jim Hughart, and drummer Shelly Manne, plus an occasional string section, backed Waits and his piano on songs steeped in whiskey and atmosphere in which he alternately sang in his broken-beaned drunk's voice (now deeper and overtly influenced by Louis Armstrong) and recited jazzy poetry. It was as if Waits was determined to combine the Humphrey Bogart and Dooley Wilson characters from Casablanca with a dash of On the Road's Dean Moriarty to illuminate a dark world of bars and all-night diners. Of course, he'd been in that world before, but in songs like "The Piano Has Been Drinking" and "Bad Liver and a Broken Heart," Waits gave it its clearest expression. Small Change is not Tom Waits' best album. It is, like most of the albums he made in the '70s, uneven, probably because he was putting out one a year and didn't have time to come up with enough first-rate material. But it is the most obvious and characteristic of his albums for Asylum Records. If you like it, you also will like the ones before and after it; otherwise, you're not Tom Waits' kind of listener.

William Ruhlmann


Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)
Appears On Small Change [1976]
Anthology of Tom Waits [1985]

Tom Waits, via a cast of grotesque and mean characters and exaggerated scenarios that foreshadow the Fellini-esque subjects he would explore in his future 1980s trilogy of albums — Swordfishtrombones (1983), Rain Dogs (1985), and Frank's Wild Years (1987) — offers another glimpse of what he once called "one of those nights": "The piano tuner has a hearing aid...and you can't find your waitress/With a Geiger counter/And she hates you and your friends/And you just can't get served without her." After a near-disastrous year of touring that culminated in one of his shows being postponed while a surprise lineup of folk royalty consisting of Joan Baez, Roger McGuinn, and Kinky Friedman supplanted Waits unannounced on stage at a club in New Orleans, he took off "Waltzing Matilda" to Europe. It was only one in a long line of humiliating opening slots and small-club appearances that had been the bane of Waits' commercially modest touring and recording career thus far. Clearly, the road was starting to take its toll, but it was enough to spur the creative fire that produced his Small Change (1976) album. The album's songs were written mostly in London and have "that feeling," as Waits told interviewer Bill Flanagan in the latter's incisive book, -Written in My Soul, Conversations With Rock's reat Songwriters (1987): "I was in Europe for the first time. I felt like a soldier far away from home and drunk on the corner with no money, lost. I had a hotel key and I didn't know where I was." The memories of lonely one-night-stand club dates were probably still fresh in his memory as well. Such a night forms the background for the sloppy drunk "The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)." Leave it to Waits, however, to turn this gloomy scenario into something fresh, vital, humorous even. Opening with a maudlin piano (of course) introduction that increasingly slips off the rails into Thelonious Monk-like dissonance (hence the drunken piano) and joined only by bowed double-bass by Jim Hughart, Waits sings the lyrics in his gruff, Howlin' Wolf-via- Louis Armstrong voice, a litany of nightmarish snafus in some hellhole out of a Charles Bukowski story: "The jukebox has to take a leak/And the carpet needs a haircut, and the spotlight looks like a prison break/And the telephone's out of cigarettes/And the balcony is on the make/And the piano has been drinking, the piano has been drinking...." This is what you would call personification of the highest magnitude. Of course, they are all projections of the internal turmoil the narrator is dealing with, or trying to cope with, mostly through self-medication. It is the ultimate last song of the night, to be played at some gin mill after almost everyone has cleared out. There are no changes to the song, just the one chord progression. "The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)" deflates the myth that there is glory in a life on the road, the darker reality of Kerouac's romanticizing, but it does so without being didactic or even very serious — unlike such melodramatic calls from motel rooms as Bob Seger's dreadful "Turn the Page" or countless such offerings from singer/songwriters. And it also seems like Waits is taking the boozy beatnik balladeer persona to its most logical end here. He already seems to be wary of the limitations to the image, and there are suggestions that he is moving on both as a character and as a songwriter; the dissonance and off-kilter subject matter hinting at some of his more daring later work.

Bill Janovitz


Invitation to the Blues
Appears On Small Change [1976]


In the late '70s, Tom Waits was probably worried about becoming a parody of himself. By his 1975 record, Nighthawks at the Diner, he had fully realized the style he had been molding since his first record, 1973's Closing Time: He edged further away from any post- Dylan folk leanings with each record, sinking deeper into the streetwise, bohemian barstool poet. On Small Change (1976), the music became even more overtly jazzy in a Tin Pan Alley way; Waits seemed intent on updating the saloon song. Later records showed Waits experimenting a little with the formula: adding heavier orchestration, writing film music, performing duets with female singers, etc. By the time he switched labels to Island, he had all but abandoned this past persona. But, on "Invitation to the Blues," Waits was probably not yet all that concerned with self-parody; no one else was doing what he was during these years of rock & roll excess — the 1976 song of the year Grammy award went to "I Write the Songs" and best new artist to the Starlight Vocal Band ( "Afternoon Delight"). "Invitation to the Blues" would have certainly been off most radar screens. But that is where Waits thrived. Allowing others to score the occasional hit with one of his songs, he combed the diners, barrooms, and alleyways, "using parking meters for walking sticks," writing about fellow fringe dwellers. Waits writes timeless lyrics, as if he sees a sort of Americana continuum from doughboys getting back home, to Louis Armstrong singing in New Orleans, to the Beats racing across the country, to Dylan's surrealist adventures, to his own narrator in a roadside diner: "And you feel just like Cagney/She looks like Rita Hayworth/At the counter of the Schwab's drugstore." The piano plays a Southern jazzy blues — not unlike some of Mose Allison's songs — a descending progression for the verses, the music ripe for a narrative. The instrumentation is filled out by Jim Hughart on upright bass, a bluesy tenor sax solo from Lew Tabackin, and a string section arranged by Jerry Yester. Waits' expressive voice has "seasoned" to a well-worn, boozy growl which, for a relatively young man, sounds perilously close to an old bluesman's rheumatic hack. Obvious references would have to include Howlin' Wolf — if he had actually crooned — and Louis Armstrong, particularly on the rich vibrato. Waits offers a noir-like (think The Postman Always Rings Twice) rendition of a Spencer Tracy- Katherine Hepburn smart-aleck conversation that is really a ritualized mating dance by two people who know better — a transient and a waitress at a roadside diner — and yet the narrator decides to stick around, against his better judgment: "Get me a room down at the Squire/The fillin' station's hiring/And I can eat here every night/What the hell do I got to lose?" And that's the rub: they've both been through the ringer, but there are no better prospects on the horizon: "...mercy, mercy, Mr. Percy/There ain't nothin' back in Jersey/But a broken-down jalopy of a man I left behind/And a dream that I was chasin'/And a battle with the booze/And an open invitation to the blues." The images are familiar, as is the title — an old Gershwin standard and Roger Miller country song both share the title — but Waits is a natural, with a highly developed ear for dialogue, and he revels in the common cultural currency, able to twist it to somehow be relevant for the mid-'70s and beyond. As noted, his concerns are timeless and oblivious to trends. If anything, he could be accused of nostalgically romanticizing and sentimentalizing the past. But there is little romantic about the wasted characters in "Invitation to the Blues"; though the narrator pictures himself as Cagney, listeners know he is the only one kidding himself. Indeed, so does he.

Bill Janovitz

All-Music Guide, © 1992 - 2002 AEC One Stop Group, Inc.



The people who populate Tom Waits' songs are deeply rooted in 20th-century American mythology. They come from tough-guy novels, pulp magazines, radio serials and film noir. Waits isn't interested in the heroes of this fiction, but with the people who exist on its fringes: cabbies, newsstand dealers, shoeshine boys and all-night waitresses. In the perverted language of American politics, they are known as "the little people," but Waits would agree with writer Joseph Mitchell that "they are as big as you are, whoever you are."

With his cigarette dangling from his mouth, his cap slapped over his forehead, Waits slouches through these streets presenting himself not as a detached observer but as a full-fledged native. He is, of course, an avowed sentimentalist in love with a place and an era that no longer exist—a time when people ate mulligan stew and called a five-dollar bill a "fin." Playing rudimentary jazz piano and singing in a strangled cigarette-and-whiskey voice, Waits is at once an extremely affected anachronism and a brilliant chronicler of our past.

That duality persists on Small Change. While he has all but abandoned the Kerouac-like raps which crippled his last album (Nighthawks at the Diner) and has returned to the melodic style which highlighted his first two LPs, Waits has broken no new ground. His songs focus on mood rather than narrative. And the mood of Small Change is the same as his previous albums: the late-night blues where fatigue and romance mingle. The piano and occasional strings and saxophone relentlessly reinforce this atmosphere. His language still sparkles, the one-liners still dazzle, but his purview remains stringently narrow. Though he continues to write superb songs (particularly "Tom Traubert's Blues" and "Invitation to the Blues"), Waits is now repeating himself. Unless he expands his musical foundations and investigates the themes of his world, Waits will remain an appealing, but limited, artist.

KIT RACHLIS - RS 229
© Copyright 2002 RollingStone.com
 

 L y r i c s


TOM TRAUBERT'S BLUES

Wasted and wounded, it ain't what the moon did
I've got what I paid for now
see ya tomorrow, hey Frank, can I borrow
a couple of bucks from you, to go
Waltzing Mathilda, waltzing Mathilda, you'll go waltzing
Mathilda with me

I'm an innocent victim of a blinded alley
and I'm tired of all these soldiers here
no one speaks English, and everything's broken
and my Stacys are soaking wet
to go waltzing Mathilda, waltzing Mathilda, you'll go waltzing Mathilda with me

now the dogs are barking
and the taxi cab's parking
a lot they can do for me
I begged you to stab me
you tore my shirt open
and I'm down on my knees tonight
Old Bushmill's I staggered, you buried the dagger in
your silhouette window light go to go
waltzing Mathilda, waltzing Mathilda, you'll go waltzing
Mathilda with me

now I lost my Saint Christopher now that I've kissed her and the one-armed bandit knows, and the maverick Chinamen, and the cold-blooded signs
and the girls down by the strip-tease shows go
waltzing Mathilda, waltzing Mathilda, you'll go waltzing Mathilda with me

no, I don't want your sympathy, the fugitives say that the streets aren't for dreaming now
manslaughter dragnets and the ghosts that sell memories
they want a piece of the action anyhow go
waltzing Mathilda, waltzing Mathilda, you'll go waltzing Mathilda with me

and you can ask any sailor, and the keys from the jailor
and the old men in wheelchairs know
that Mathilda's the defendant, she killed about a hundred
and she follows wherever you may go
waltzing Mathilda, waltzing Mathilda, you'll go waltzing
Mathilda with me

and it's a battered old suitcase to a hotel someplace
and a wound that will never heal
no prima donna, the perfume is on
an old shirt that is stained with blood and whiskey
and goodnight to the street sweepers
the night watchman flame keepers
and goodnight to Mathilda too


STEP RIGHT UP

Step right up
step right up
step right up
Everyone's a winner, bargains galore
That's right, you too can be the proud owner
Of the quality goes in before the name goes on
One-tenth of a dollar
one-tenth of a dollar
we got service after sales
You need perfume? we got perfume
how 'bout an engagement ring?
Something for the little lady
something for the little lady
Something for the little lady, hmm
Three for a dollar
We got a year-end clearance, we got a white sale
And a smoke-damaged furniture
you can drive it away today
Act now, act now
and receive as our gift, our gift to you
They come in all colors, one size fits all
No muss, no fuss, no spills
you're tired of kitchen drudgery
Everything must go
going out of business
going out of business
Going out of business sale
Fifty percent off original retail price
skip the middle man
Don't settle for less
How do we do it?
how do we do it?
volume, volume, turn up the volume
Now you've heard it advertised, don't hesitate
Don't be caught with your drawers down
Don't be caught with your drawers down
You can step right up, step right up

That's right, it filets, it chops
It dices, slices, never stops
lasts a lifetime, mows your lawn
And it mows your lawn
and it picks up the kids from school
It gets rid of unwanted facial hair
it gets rid of embarrassing age spots
It delivers a pizza
and it lengthens, and it strengthens
And it finds that slipper that's been at large
under the chaise longe for several weeks
And it plays a mean Rhythm Master
It makes excuses for unwanted lipstick on your collar
And it's only a dollar, step right up
it's only a dollar, step right up

'Cause it forges your signature.
If not completely satisfied
mail back unused portion of product
For complete refund of price of purchase
Step right up
Please allow thirty days for delivery
don't be fooled by cheap imitations
You can live in it, live in it
laugh in it, love in it
Swim in it, sleep in it
Live in it, swim in it
laugh in it, love in it
Removes embarrassing stains from contour sheets
that's right
And it entertains visiting relatives
it turns a sandwich into a banquet
Tired of being the life of the party?
Change your shorts
change your life
change your life
Change into a nine-year-old Hindu boy
get rid of your wife
And it walks your dog, and it doubles on sax
Doubles on sax, you can jump back Jack
see you later alligator
See you later alligator
And it steals your car
It gets rid of your gambling debts, it quits smoking
It's a friend, and it's a companion
And it's the only product you will ever need
Follow these easy assembly instructions
it never needs ironing
Well it takes weights off hips, bust
thighs, chin, midriff
Gives you dandruff, and it finds you a job
it is a job
And it strips the phone company free
take ten for five exchange
And it gives you denture breath
And you know it's a friend, and it's a companion
And it gets rid of your traveler's checks
It's new, it's improved, it's old-fashioned
Well it takes care of business
never needs winding
Never needs winding
never needs winding
Gets rid of blackheads, the heartbreak of psoriasis
Christ, you don't know the meaning of heartbreak, buddy
C'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon
'Cause it's effective, it's defective
it creates household odors
It disinfects, it sanitizes for your protection
It gives you an erection
it wins the election
Why put up with painful corns any longer?
It's a redeemable coupon, no obligation
no salesman will visit your home
We got a jackpot, jackpot, jackpot
prizes, prizes, prizes, all work guaranteed
How do we do it
how do we do it
how do we do it
how do we do it
We need your business
we're going out of business
We'll give you the business
Get on the business
end of our going-out-of-business sale
Receive our free brochure, free brochure
Read the easy-to-follow assembly instructions
batteries not included
Send before midnight tomorrow, terms available
Step right up
step right up
step right up
You got it buddy: the large print giveth
and the small print taketh away
Step right up
you can step right up
you can step right up
C'mon step right up
(Get away from me kid, you bother me...)
Step right up, step right up, step right up
c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon
Step right up
you can step right up
c'mon and step right up
C'mon and step right up


JITTERBUG BOY

Well, I'm a jitterbug boy
by the shoe-shine
resting on my laurels
and my Hardys too
life of Riley on a swing shift
gears follow my drift
Once upon a time I was
in show-biz too

I seen the Brooklyn Dodgers
playin at Ebbets Field
seen the Kentucky Derby too
it's fast women, slow horses, I'm reliable sources
and I'm holding up a lamp post
if you want to know
I seen the Wabash Cannonball,
buddy, I've done it all

beause I slept with the lions
and Marilyn Monroe
had breakfast in the eye
of a hurricane
fought Rocky Marciano,
played Minnesota Fats
burned hundred-dollar bills,

I eaten Mulligan stew
got drunk with Louis Armstrong
what's that old song?
I taught Mickey Mantle
everything that he knows

and so you ask me
what I'm doing here
holding up a lamp post
flippin this quarter,
trying to make up my mind
and if it's heads I'll go to
Tennessee, and tails I'll buy a drink
if it lands on the edge
I'll keep talking to you


I WISH I WAS IN NEW ORLEANS

Well, I wish I was in New Orleans
I can see it in my dreams
arm-in-arm down Burgundy
a bottle and my friends and me
hoist up a few tall cool ones
play some pool and listen to that
tenor saxophone calling me home
and I can hear the band begin
"When the Saints Go Marching In"
by the whiskers on my chin
New Orleans, I'll be there

I'll drink you under the table
be red nose go for walks
the old haunts what I wants
is red beans and rice
and wear the dress I like so well
and meet me at the old saloon
make sure there's a Dixie moon
New Orleans, I'll be there

and deal the cards roll the dice
if it ain't that ole Chuck E. Weiss
and Clayborn Avenue me and you
Sam Jones and all
and I wish I was in New Orleans
I can see it in my dreams
arm-in-arm down Burgundy
a bottle and my friends and me
New Orleans, I'll be there


THE PIANO HAS BEEN DRINKING

The piano has been drinking
my necktie is asleep
and the combo went back to New York
the jukebox has to take a leak
and the carpet needs a haircut
and the spotlight looks like a prison break
cause the telephone's out of cigarettes
and the balcony's on the make
and the piano has been drinking
the piano has been drinking...

and the menus are all freezing
and the lightman's blind in one eye
and he can't see out of the other
and the piano-tuner's got a hearing aid
and he showed up with his mother
and the piano has been drinking
the piano has been drinking

cause the bouncer is a Sumo wrestler
cream puff casper milk toast
and the owner is a mental midget
with the I.Q. of a fencepost
cause the piano has been drinking
the piano has been drinking...

and you can't find your waitress
with a Geiger counter
And she hates you and your friends
and you just can't get served
without her
and the box-office is drooling
and the bar stools are on fire
and the newspapers were fooling
and the ash-trays have retired
the piano has been drinking
the piano has been drinking
The piano has been drinking
not me, not me, not me, not me, not me


INVITATION TO THE BLUES

Well she's up against the register
with an apron and a spatula
with yesterday's deliveries,
and the tickets for the bachelors
she's a moving violation
from her conk down to her shoes
but it's just an invitation to the blues

and you feel just like Cagney
looks like Rita Hayworth
at the counter of the Schwab's drug store
you wonder if she might be single
she's a loner likes to mingle
got to be patient and pick up a clue

she says howyougonnalikem
over medium or scrambled
anyway's the only way
be careful not to gamble
on a guy with a suitcase
and a ticket gettin out of here
it's a tired bus station
and an old pair of shoes
but it ain't nothing but an
invitation to the blues

but you can't take your eyes off her
get another cup of java
and it's just the way she pours it for you
joking with the customers
and it's mercy mercy Mr. Percy
there ain't nothin back in Jersey
but a broken-down jalopy of a
man I left behind
and a dream that I was chasin
and a battle with booze
and an open invitation to the blues

but she's had a sugar daddy
and a candy apple Caddy
and a bank account and everything
accustom to the finer things
he probably left her for a socialite
and he didn't love her 'cept at night
and then he's drunk and never
even told her that he cared
so they took the registration
and the car-keys and her shoes
And left her with an invitation
to the blues

'Cause there's a Continental Trailways leaving
local bus tonight, good evening
you can have my seat
I'm stickin round here for a while
get me a room at the Squire
the filling station's hiring
I can eat here every night
what the hell have I got to lose
got a crazy sensation,
go or stay and I've got to choose
and I'll accept your invitation to the blues


PASTIES AND A G-STRING

Smelling like a brewery,
looking like a tramp
I ain't got a quarter
got a postage stamp
Been five o'clock shadow boxing
all around the town
Talking with the old men
sleeping on the ground
Bazanti bootin
al zootin al hoot
and Al Cohn
sharin this apartment
with a telephone pole
and it's a fish-net stockings
spike-heel shoes
Strip tease, prick tease
car kease blues
and the porno floor show
live nude girls
dreamy and creamy
and the brunette curls
Chesty Morgan and a
Watermelon Rose
raise my rent and take off
all your clothes
with the trench coats
magazines bottle full of rum
she's so good, it make
a dead man cum, with
pasties and a g-string
beer and a shot
Portland through a shot glass
and a Buffalo squeeze
wrinkles and cherry
and twinky and pinky
and FeFe live from Gay Paree
fanfares rim shots
back stage who cares
all this hot burlesque for me

cleavage, cleavage thighs and hips
from the nape of her neck
to the lip stick lips
chopped and channeled
and lowered and louvered
and a cheater slicks
and baby moons
she's hot and ready
and creamy and sugared
and the band is awful
and so are the tunes

crawlin on her belly shakin like jelly
and I'm getting harder than
Chinese algebraziers and cheers
from the compendium here
hey sweet heart they're yellin for more
squashing out your cigarette butts
on the floor
and I like Shelly
you like Jane
what was the girl with the snake skins name
it's an early bird matinee
come back any day
getcha little sompin
that cha can't get at home
getcha little sompin
that cha can't get at home
pasties and a g-string
beer and a shot
Portland through a shot glass
and a Buffalo squeeze
popcorn, front row
higher than a kite
and I'll be back tomorrow night
and I'll be back tomorrow night


BAD LIVER AND A BROKEN HEART

Well I got a bad liver and a broken heart
yea I drunk me a river since you tore me apart
and I don't have a drinking problem
cept when I can't get a drink
And I wish you'd a known her
we were quite a pair
she was sharp as a razor
and soft as a prayer
so welcome to the continuing saga
she was my better half
and I was just a dog
and so here am I slumped
I been chippied I been chumped
on my stool
so buy this fool, some spirits and libations
it's these railroad station bars
with all these conductors and the porters
and I'm all out of quarters
and this epitaph is the aftermath
yea I choose my path
hey come on Cath, he's a lawyer,
he ain't the one for ya
and no the moon ain't romantic
it's intimidating as hell
and some guy's trying to sell
me a watch
And so I'll meet you at the
bottom of a bottle of
bargain Scotch
I got me a bottle and a dream
it's so maudlin it seems

you can name your poison
go on ahead and make some noise
I ain't sentimental
this ain't a purchase it's a rental
and it's purgatory, hey
what's your story, well
I don't even care
cause I got my own double-cross to bear

and I'll see your Red Label
and I'll raise you one more
and you can pour me a cab,
I just can't drink no more
cause it don't douse the flames
that are started by dames
It ain't like asbestos
it don't do nothing but
rest us assured
and substantiate the rumors
that you've heard.


THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY

The jigolo's jumpin salty
ain't no trade out on the streets
half past the unlucky
and the hawk's a front-row seat
dressed in full orquestration
stage door johnnys got to pay
and sent him home
talking bout the one that got away

could a been on easy street
could a been a wheel
with irons in the fire
and all them business deals
But the last of the big-time losers
shouted before he drove away
I'll be right back as soon as I crack
the one that got away

the ambulance drivers don't give a shit
they just want to get off work
and the short stop and the victim
have already gone berserk
and the shroud-tailor measures him
for a deep-six holiday
the stiff is froze, the case is closed
on the one that got away

Jim Crow's directing traffic
with them cemetery blues
with them peculiar looking trousers
them old Italian shoes
the wooden kimona was all ready
to drop in San Francisco Bay
but now he's mumbling something
all about the one that got away

Costello was the champion
at the St. Moritz Hotel
and the best this side of Fairfax,
reliable sources tell
but his reputation is at large
and he's at Ben Frank's every day
waiting for the one that got away

he's got a snake skin sportshirt,
and he looks like Vincent Price
with a little piece of chicken
and he's carving off a slice
but someone tipped her off
she'll be doing a Houdini now any day
she shook his hustle
and a Greyhound bus'll
take the one that got away

Andre is at the piano
behind the Ivar in the sewers
with a buck a shot for pop tunes,
and a fin for guided tours
He could of been in Casablanca
he stood in line out there all day
but now he's spilling whiskey
and learning songs about a one that got away

well I've lost my equilibrium
my car keys and my pride
tattoo parlor's warm
and so I huddle there inside
the grinding of the buzz saw
whatchuwanthathingtosay
just don't misspell her name
buddy she's the one that got away


SMALL CHANGE (GOT RAINED ON WITH HIS OWN .38)

Well small change got rained on with his own .38
and nobody flinched down by the arcade
and the marquise weren't weeping
they went stark-raving mad
and the cabbies were the only ones
that really had it made
and his cold trousers were twisted,
and the sirens high and shrill
and crumpled in his fist was a five-dollar bill
and the naked mannikins with their
cheshire grins
and the raconteurs
and roustabouts said buddy
come on in
cause the dreams ain't broken down here now
now ...they're walking with a limp
now that

small change got rained on with his own .38"
and nobody flinched down by the arcade
and the burglar alarm's been disconnected
and the newsmen start to rattle
and the cops are tellin' jokes
about some whore house in Seattle
and the fire hydrants plead the 5th Amendment
and the furniture's bargains galore
but the blood is by the jukebox
on an old linoleum floor
and it's a hot rain on 42nd Street
and now the umbrellas ain't got a chance
And the newsboy's a lunatic
with stains on his pants cause

small change got rained on with his own .38
and no one's gone over to close his eyes
and there's a racing form in his pocket
circled "Blue Boots" in the 3rd
and the cashier at the clothing store
he didn't say a word as the
siren tears the night in half
and someone lost his wallet
well it's surveillance of assailants
if that's whatchawannacallit
and the whores hike up their skirts
and fish for drug-store prophylactics*
with their mouths cut just like
razor blades and their eyes are like stilettos
and her radiator's steaming
and her teeth are in a wreck
now she won't let you kiss her
but what the hell do you expect
and the Gypsies are tragic and if you
wanna to buy perfume, well
they'll bark you down like
carneys... sell you Christmas cards in June
but...

small change got rained on with his own .38
and his headstone's
a gumball machine
no more chewing gum
or baseball cards or
overcoats or dreams and
someone is hosing down the sidewalk
and he's only in his teens

small change got rained on with his own .38
and a fistful of dollars can't change that
and someone copped his watch fob
and someone got his ring
and the newsboy got his porkpie Stetson hat
and the tuberculosis old men
at the Nelson wheeze and cough
and someone will head south
until this whole thing cools off cause
small change got rained on with his own .38
yea small change got rained on with his own .38

*this line omitted from lyric sheet


I CAN'T WAIT TO GET OFF WORK (AND SEE MY BABY ON MONTGOMERY AVENUE)

Well I don't mind working
cause I used to be jerkin off
most of my time in the bars
I been a cabbie and a stock clerk
and a soda fountain jock jerk
and a manic mechanic on cars
It's nice work if you can get it
now who the hell said it
I got money to spend on my gal
but the work never stops
and I'll be busting my chops
working for Joe and Sal.

And I can't wait to get off work
and see my baby
she said she'd leave the porch lite
on for me
I'm disheveled I'm disdainful
and I'm distracted and it's painful
but this job sweeping up here is
is gainfully employing me tonight

Tom do this Tom do that
Tom, don't do that
count the cash, clean the oven
dump the trash oh your lovin
is a rare and a copasetic gift
and I'm a moonlight watchmanic
it's hard to be romantic
(sweeping up over by the
cigarette machine
sweeping up over by the cigarette machine...)

I can't wait to get off work
and see my baby
she'll be waiting up with a magazine for me
clean the bathrooms, clean um good
oh your lovin I wish you would
come down here and sweepameoffmyfeet
this broom'll have to be my baby
if I hurry, I just might
get off before the dawns early light.

 M P 3   S a m p l e s


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