Mama Miriama Band

At this time Tom Waits’ work is inevitably linked to the Elektra-Asylum label and producer Bones Howe. These are the years of growth, in which the artist focuses on his piano and issues deeply romantic, melancholy, with that smoky night owl and hovering over her figure on the cover of Small Change.

Closing Time (1973) is the first album. A work in which the piano and his voice are center stage. From the very beginning we found what would later become one of its most important features: their stories and their way of counting, on subjects as beautiful as Martha, Ol’55, Grapefruit Moon and Old Shoes. On the tour of this work comes to opening for Frank Zappa, an experience that earned him more than a night of boos.

In The Heart of Saturday Night (1974) followed the same line and gloomy villain, perhaps with a more jazz piano at times. But above all, musical and lyrical maturity improper for a boy of 25 years. Romantic themes (San Diego Serenade), juveniles (Heart of Saturday Night) or night (Drunk on the Moon) begin to form a central theme in his early years. In 1975, Nighthawks at the Diner appeared, a work study reveled in the nightlife of a dump, with its lectures, its noise, smoke snuff … Each topic has a brief introduction to spoken and here we begin to see that sly and Waits funny that later explode.

Small Change (1976) is his most tragic, bitter, both musically and in his lyrics, with some exceptions as Step Right Up But there are songs like the famous Tom Traubert’s Blues, The Piano as Been Drinking, the crude Small Change or I Wish I Was In New Orleans, which is a perfect example of the sound of the album and probably the high point of the Tom Waits of the seventies, drunk with grief and night owls.

The last years of the 70 are closed with a couple of jobs, but had some interesting topic, and Burma-Shave and Romeo is Bleeding, did not reach the previous level: Foreign Affairs, 1977, and Blue Valentine, the 78. Both showed the singer Rickie Lee Jones, the first on the cover and the second on the back. Foreign Affairs included a collaboration with Bette Midler on the subject I Do not Talk to Strangers. Although it was a commercial failure, Heart attack and Vine (1980), is considered the transitional album, but seeing signs in this work most is what would really complicated. Because here, Waits continues along its old paths, but less inspired, although the record contained some good songs, like Jersey Girl, Bruce Springsteen later became successful, or Mr. Siegal.