Tom Waits Nighthawke at The Diner

Tom Waits' debut album is a minor-key masterpiece filled with songs of late-night loneliness. Within the apparently narrow range of the cocktail bar pianistics and muttered vocals, Waits and producer Jerry Yester manage a surprisingly broad collection of styles, from the jazzy "Virginia Avenue" to the up-tempo funk of "Ice Cream Man" and from the acoustic guitar folkiness of "I Hope That I Don't Fall in Love With You" to the saloon song "Midnight Lullaby," which would have been a perfect addition to the repertoires of Frank Sinatra or Tony Bennett…

Unquestionably the definitive recording of Waits' early period, SMALL CHANGE brings his beatnik/grifter/gruff, poetic piano man persona into sharp, defining focus. Waits' blues/jazz/'40s pop amalgam is at its most cohesive here, as he's backed by three West Coast jazz vets and an occasional (never overweening) string section. "Tom Traubert's Blues," later covered by Rod Stewart, is a milestone, and one of the greatest cry-in-your-beer tunes of all time. Waits plays the down-and-out, alcohol-ravaged troubadour to perfection here as well as on "Invitation to the Blues" and the devastating "Bad Liver and a Broken Heart," where one can almost smell the cheap whiskey on his breath…

Far and away the season's best cabaret show… Sometimes, something remarkable can grow from the most unexpected juxtapositions. At 28, Marissa Mulder has a voice like a spring morning and a face to match. Her singing frequently puts experienced cabaret-goers in mind of Blossom Dearie's little-girl innocence, and therefore the least likely material she could tackle would be the gin-soaked, hard-luck, grimy inner-city stories of Tom Waits. No, she doesn't take the easy step of addressing the songwriter's lighter material, nor does she try to brighten up any of Mr. Waits's infamously dark, rumpled anthems. Instead, she takes his darkest and most profound songs and looks them straight in the eye. Complementing Ms. Mulder's starkly honest interpretations is pianist Jon Weber, who helps her extract the majestically dysfunctional beauty of texts like "Broken Bicycles" without merely prettying them up.

In the 1970s, Tom Waits combined a lyrical focus on desperate, low-life characters with a persona that seemed to embody the same lifestyle, which he sang about in a raspy, gravelly voice.

The second British Tom Waits compilation was a more extensive look at the 1973-1980 Asylum Records catalog than the first, Bounced Checks from 1981 (four more tracks), but it was another idiosyncratic selection. Waits' stellar first two albums were better represented, with three strong tracks drawn from The Heart of Saturday Night and two from Closing Time, but "Ol' 55" was ignored again, and nothing was included from the third album, Nighthawks at the Diner, which is the favorite of many Waits fans. Three tracks were repeated from Bounced Checks - "Burma Shave," "I Never Talk to Strangers," a duet with Bette Midler, and "Tom Traubert's Blues" - and they were worthy, but where was "Jersey Girl"? The choices from the later albums were spotty: why use Waits' questionable cover of "Somewhere" from West Side Story and leave out a brilliant story-song like "Romeo Is Bleeding"…

Big Time is an 18-track live album running nearly 68 minutes, its material drawn mostly from Tom Waits' trio of recent studio albums, Swordfishtrombones, Rain Dogs, and Franks Wild Years. (One track, "Falling Down," is a previously unissued studio recording. The performance of "Strange Weather" marks Waits' first recording of a song he and his wife, Kathleen Brennan, wrote for Marianne Faithfull.) It's challenging music, made somewhat more accessible in a live context. Waits' performances tended to be somewhat over the top on the studio versions of these songs, but before a live audience his theatrics seem more appropriate, and he even includes a mini-set of piano ballads. Still, it takes him until the seventh tune, "Way Down in the Hole," to bring the audience to life, and he rarely speaks, in marked contrast to the earlier live-in-the-studio album Nighthawks at the Diner…