The 500 - #339 - The Heart Of Saturday Night - Tom Waits

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by Los Angeles-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. 

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Album: # 339

Album Title: The Heart Of Saturday Night

Artist: Tom Waits

Genre: Blues, Jazz, Folk

Recorded: Wally Heider Studios, Hollywood, California

Released: October, 1974

My age at release: 9

How familiar was I with it before this week: A little

Is it on the 2020 list? No

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: (Looking for) The Heart Of Saturday

For the third and final time, we have a Tom Waits record on The 500. Previously, I wrote about 1985's Rain Dogs (#399) and Mule Variations (#416), which was released in 1999. The Heart Of Saturday, is the second studio album from Waits and my favourite of the three. The album cover depicts an exhausted Waits, smoking a cigarette outside a cocktail lounge while a blonde woman observes him a short distance away. The moody, night-life cover reflecting the melancholy of Waits' songs was inspired by the 1955 Frank Sinatra record, In The Wee Small Hours -- an album which is also on The 500, at #101.

Waits' music isn't for everyone. His gravelly voice is off-putting to some and others find his lyrics, which focus on the underbelly of society, depressing and sometimes morose. In the 80s and 90s, Waits became increasingly experimental. He dabbled with cacophonous, industrial sounds and bizarre, sometimes grotesque, arrangements on later releases. However, this record, The Heart Of Saturday Night, and his debut release, Closing Time, are more conventional and likely more appealing to most listeners.

If I were to introduce the uninitiated to Waits, I would play them side two from Saturday Night long before revealing Mule Variations, Rain Dogs or Bone Machine. Indeed, much about the tone of those records can be gleaned from the titles and album covers alone.

I discovered The Heart Of Saturday Night while working as a bartender in the late 90s. 

Garlics Restaurant - my home away from home for 12 years

One particularly busy night, this record was in the rotation. At that time I was less familiar with the songs on it, so I was taken by surprise when Rob, a waiter who is still my good friend, walked by and, with an impish smile, said plaintively:

"Colder than a whale-digger's ass."

Talk about your non-sequitur. I was flummoxed and, as Rob walked away to continue serving customers, my head swirled with questions. 

"What the hell is a whale-digger?" 
"Was whale-digging something out of Moby Dick?"

"Maybe they are sea-hardy fishermen who harpoon sperm whales in order to dig for the precious ambergris deep in their intestines?" 

"I suppose that would be cold work, right?"

"Why did Rob say he was cold?"

Some time later, I got a chance to ask Rob to clarify. "What did you mean with the whale-digger's ass?"

"Not whale...well-digger's ass", he clarified, "on the Tom Waits record."

"Colder than a well-digger's ass", I would learn, is a popular idiom in the southern United States. Waits' writes it into the fifth track on side one, Diamonds On My Windshield, a beatnik-style, spoken word, jazz performance that includes this verse:

"And a Wisconsin hiker with a cue-ball head

He's wishing he was home in a Wisconsin bed

But there's fifteen feet of snow in the East

Colder then a well-digger's ass

And it's colder than a well-digger's ass"

Diamonds On My Windshield is an unexpected departure from the other tracks on the record, which are perfect late-night, wine-sipping music. In fact, I was playing it in my classroom during a recess period this week. A few students stayed behind to play cards (aka: avoid the cold weather).  As the record played, one piped up and said:

"This is the kind of music you hear in a fancy restaurant."

He was spot on, and I highly recommend The Heart Of Saturday Night for your next dinner party, or any time when the wine is close at hand and you want to escape into Waits' melancholy and wistful world for an hour.

And I'm still not convinced that the job of "whale-digging" doesn't exist.

Cocktail Party Fact

In 1979, Tom Waits sat down for an interview with Australian TV host Don Lane. Many believe the strange interview, available here on YouTube, helped inspire Heath Ledger's performance at The Joker for The Dark Knight movie. Unfortunately, Ledger died in 2008, so it can't be confirmed. You be the judge.