The Heart of Saturday Night by Tom Waits

The Heart of Saturday Night, Tom Waits' second album, rolled out on Asylum on October 15, 1974, a year after Closing Time, and it's the sound of a barroom poet who has read his Kerouac and means it. He wrote the title song as a salute to Kerouac himself, and the whole record smells of neon, cold coffee and the long drive home.

It's also where Waits first teamed up with Bones Howe, who went on to produce and engineer every record the singer made until he left the label, a partnership that lasted a decade. Between them they built a smoky, after-hours room where folk, blues and jazz share the same bar stool, and that deep, gravelly voice goes looking for the people on the underside of town. "Diamonds On My Windshield" and "San Diego Serenade" turn up on the countdowns too, and Nighthawks at the Diner followed the next year.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.