Label:
Asylum Records – 7E-2008
Format:
2 × Vinyl, LP, Album, Gatefold
Country:
Canada/US / Released: 1975
Style:
Jazz, Blues, Cabaret
Recorded live at
the Record Plant and Wally Heider Recording, Hollywood on 30 and 31 July, 1975.
Design
– Cal Schenkel
Engineer
[Assistant], Recorded By [Assistant] – Kelly Kotera, "Big Norm"
Dlugatch, Rick Smith, Ron Marks, Steve Smith
Engineer,
Producer – Bones Howe
Mastered
By – Terry Dunavan
Other
[Instance] – Herb Cohen
Photography
By [Back Cover] – Matt Kramer
Photography
By [Cover, Liner] – Norman Seeff
Recorded
By – Bones Howe
A1-
(Opening Intro)
..............................................................................................
2:59
A2
- Emotional Weather Report
........................................................................... 3:44
A3
- (Intro)
............................................................................................................
2:14
A4
- On A Foggy Night ........................................................................................
3:52
A5
- (Intro)
............................................................................................................
1:54
A6
- Eggs And Sausage (In A Cadillac With Susan Michelson) .......................... 4:16
B1
- (Intro) ............................................................................................................
3:14
B2
- Better Off Without A Wife
............................................................................. 4:00
B3
- Nighthawk Postcards (From Easy Street) ...................................................
11:31
C1
- (Intro)
............................................................................................................
0:56
C2
- Warm Beer And Cold Women
...................................................................... 5:21
C3
- (Intro)
............................................................................................................
0:47
C4
- Putnam County
............................................................................................
7:35
C5
- Spare Parts I (A Nocturnal Emission)
.......................................................... 6:25
Written-By – Chuck E. Weiss
D1 - Nobody
.........................................................................................................
2:51
D2
- (Intro)
............................................................................................................
0:38
D3
- Big Joe And Phantom 309
............................................................................ 6:33
Written-By – Tommy Faile
D4
- Spare Parts II And Closing
........................................................................... 5:18
All
songs written-by – Tom Waits, except C5 and D3.
Personnel:
Tom
Waits – vocals, guitar, piano(tracks: A6, B2, C2, C4, D1)
Pete
Christlieb – tenor saxophone
Mike
Melvoin – piano, electric piano
Jim
Hughart – upright bass
Bill Goodwin – drums,
percussion
The
title was inspired by Edward Hopper's 1942 painting Nighthawks. The album's
working title had been "Nighthawk Postcards from Easy Street," but
was shortened to Nighthawks at the Diner, which is the opening line to
"Eggs and Sausage (In a Cadillac with Susan Michelson)". The cover,
designed by Cal Schenkel, is also inspired by the painting.
Nighthawks
at the Diner is the first live album by Tom Waits and his third overall. It was
released on Asylum Records in October 1975. It was recorded live in the Los
Angeles Record Plant Studios on July 30 and 31, 1975, in front of a small
invited audience. Waits opens the album by calling the venue Raphael's Silver
Cloud Lounge...
Nighthawks
by Edward Hopper (painting, oil on canvas, 1942)
Bones
Howe, the album's producer, on the recording of the album:
We
did it as a live recording, which was unusual for an artist so new. Herb Cohen
and I both had a sense that we needed to bring out the jazz in Waits more
clearly. Tom was a great performer on stage, so we started talking about where
we could do an album that would have a live feel to it. We thought about clubs,
but the well-known ones like The Troubadour were toilets in those days. Then I
remembered that Barbra Streisand had made a record at the old Record Plant
Studios, when they were on 3rd Street near Cahuenga Boulevard. There was a room
there that she got an entire orchestra into. Back in those days they would just
roll the consoles around to where they needed them. So Herb and I said let's
see if we can put tables and chairs in there and get an audience in and record
a show.
Howe
was mostly responsible for organizing the band for the "live show",
and creating the right atmosphere for the record:
I
got Michael Melvoin on piano, and he was one of the greatest jazz arrangers
ever; I had Jim Hughart on bass, Bill Goodwin on drums and Pete Christlieb on
sax. It was a totally jazz rhythm section. Herb gave out tickets to all his
friends, we set up a bar, put potato chips on the tables and we had a sell-out,
two nights, two shows a night, July 30 and 31, 1975. I remember that the
opening act was a stripper. Her name was Dewana and her husband was a taxi
driver. So for her the band played bump-and-grind music - and there's no jazz
player who has never played a strip joint, so they knew exactly what to do. But
it put the room in exactly the right mood. Then Waits came out and sang
"Emotional Weather Report." Then he turned around to face the band
and read the classified section of the paper while they played. It was like
Allen Ginsberg with a really, really good band.
Dewana
was an old-time burlesque queen whom Tom had met on one of his jaunts to the
Hollywood underworld.
Jim
Hughart, who played upright bass on the recordings recalled the experience of
preparing for and recording the album:
Preparing for this
thing, we had to memorize all this stuff, 'cause Waits had nothing on paper. So
ultimately, we spent four or five days in a rehearsal studio going over this
stuff. And that was drudgery. But when we did actually get it all prepared and
go and record, that was the fastest two days of recording I've ever spent in my
life. It was so fun. Some of the tunes were not what you'd call jazz tunes, but
for the most part that was like a jazz record. This was a jazz band. Bill
Goodwin was a drummer who was associated with Phil Woods for years. Pete
Christlieb is one of the best jazz tenor players who ever lived. And my old
friend, Mike Melvoin, played piano. There's a good reason why it was accepted
as a jazz record.
_1. For
his third album, Nighthawks at the Diner, Tom Waits set up a nightclub in the
studio, invited an audience, and cut a 70-minute, two-LP set of new songs. It's
an appropriate format for compositions that deal even more graphically and, for
the first time, humorously with Waits' late-night world of bars and diners. The
love lyrics of his debut album had long since given way to a comic lonely-guy
stance glimpsed in "Emotional Weather Report" and "Better Off
Without a Wife." But what really matters is the elaborate scene-setting of
songs like the six-and-a-half-minute "Spare Parts," the
seven-and-a-half-minute "Putnam County," and especially the
11-and-a-half-minute "Nighthawk Postcards" that are essentially
poetry recitations with jazz backing. Waits is a colorful tour guide of
midnight L.A., raving over a swinging rhythm section of Jim Hughart (bass) and
Bill Goodwin (drums), with Pete Christlieb wailing away on tenor sax between
paragraphs and Mike Melvoin trading off with Waits on piano runs. You could
call it overdone, but then, this kind of material made its impact through an
accumulation of miscellaneous detail, and who's to say how much is too much?
_2. In
1975 Tom Waits was still fairly unknown, and there was a mutual feeling that a
live album would capture the personality of the beatnik stageman. This plan was
executed in the best way – a concert was recorded in a New York studio. A large
room in the back of Record Plant Studios was set up with a stage and tables,
drinks on the house. The best of four performances are mixed together on
Nighthawks at the Diner, and create a world of smoky nightclubs on late foggy
nights.
This
kind of control allows for fantastic sound. Engineers could manipulate the
environment to their liking, and the natural balance of audience to band is
perfect. Tom's voice permeates the mix just enough to ensure his words are
heard clearly.
Nighthawks
At The Diner finds Waits backed by a quartet of seasoned jazz cats.
The
band is spot-on, playing tight, dynamic, and smooth jazz. Tenor sax, piano,
upright bass, and a kit create a combo well equipped for the job. These guys
were on Heart of Saturday Night too, and their chops hold true on this live
effort.
Tom
greets the crowd:
Well,
an inebriated good evening to you all.
Welcome
to Rapheal's Silver Cloud Lounge.
Slip
me a little crimson Jimson, give me the low down Brown,
I
want some scoop Betty Boop. I'm on my way into town...
Playing
the role of the Hollywood hobo to the hilt, Waits performs every song
elegantly, daubing each sepia-toned number with canny one-liners and well-paced
asides. Throughout, a jive-talking Waits works blue ("I'm so goddamn horny
the crack of dawn better be careful around me"), banters of "coffee
not strong enough to defend itself" and uses bebop jargon to construct
some memorable and deeply profound poetry, with discussions of "pincushion
skies" and "Velveeta-yellow cabs" and "the impending squint
of first light" and such. Theatrical piano bar signifiers abound: Waits
introduces the band and drops names of familiar Los Angeles locales and eating
establishments, to the delight of the game and agreeable crowd, perhaps laying
the tracks for some of Todd Snider's endless, stoned preambles. Waits
occasionally gets serious, as on the saccharine "Nobody" and the
uncharacteristically grave reading of Red Sovine's trucker ghost story
"Big Joe and Phantom 309," as well the fantastic "Putnam
County," a number that blends Waits' post-Beat patter ("And the
Stratocasters slung over the burgermeister beer guts / swizzle stick legs
jackknifed over Naugahyde stools") with a piano melody worthy of Bill
Evans...
The
atmosphere maintained on this album is witty, dark, and a little absurd –
really the best qualities of Tom Waits. At around seventy minutes it's a
lengthy listen, especially since paying attention to Wait's words is half the
point, but well worth it. Maybe not the best place to start for new listeners,
but this record gives an intimate picture of one of the most unique American
songwriters of the century's live personality.
If
you find it, buy this album!
