Tom Waits’ Small Change to get 50th anniversary vinyl reissue alongside rare footage

Small Change is considered the high watermark of Waits’ early period, its success prompting him to put together a touring band. Songs like “Tom Traubert’s Blues”, “Step Right Up”, and “The Piano Has Been Drinking” drew on the great American songbook, beat poetry, and the low-lit storytelling Waits had been collecting across his three previous albums. In a 1976 interview following the album’s original release, he traced that material back to a very specific education.

“I got a job as doorman at a night club in L.A., and I listened to all the acts from the door. I heard bluegrass, comics, folk singers, string bands,” Waits said. “At the same time, I was picking up people’s conversations in all-night coffee shops: ambulance drivers, cabdrivers, street sweepers. I did research there as an evening curator, and I started writing, gingerly. I thought at some point I’d like to forge it all into something meaningful and give it dignity.”

The newly circulated Fernwood Tonight clip, hosted by comedy actor Martin Mull, shows Waits hunched over a piano, delivering an irreverent solo performance that feels part comedy, part cabaret.

Just last month, Waits shared “The Fly”, a spoken word track. And a few months before that, he teamed up with Massive Attack for the protest song "Boots on the Ground", Waits' first original work in 15 years.