Small Change by Tom Waits

Small Change, Tom Waits's fourth studio album, came out on Asylum Records on September 21, 1976, and it's the record where the gravel-voiced kid who came up through the folk scene stopped sounding like a visitor to the jazz club and started sounding like he owned the joint. Bones Howe produced it, and the sessions went down in July at Wally Heider's Studio 3 in Hollywood: smoky, after-hours music, a jazz record at heart, with that sandpaper growl spinning stories from the wrong side of town.

It outsold everything he'd put out before, the payoff after Closing Time, The Heart of Saturday Night and Nighthawks at the Diner, and Waits assembled a road band to carry it, the Nocturnal Emissions, with Frank Vicari blowing tenor sax, FitzGerald Jenkins holding down the bass and Chip White switching between drums and vibes. They worked Europe and the States hard from October 1976 until May 1977.

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