Nighthawks at the Diner is an album by Tom Waits, released in 1975 on Asylum Records. The name is inspired by a 1942 painting by American Edward Hopper that is titled Nighthawks.
The album's working title had been "Nighthawk Postcards from Easy Street," but they shortened it to Nighthawks at the Diner.
The album was recorded "live" in Record Plant Studios, in front of a small invited audience. This gives the record an intimate feeling as Waits s...
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Nighthawks at the Diner is an album by Tom Waits, released in 1975 on Asylum Records. The name is inspired by a 1942 painting by American Edward Hopper that is titled Nighthawks.
The album's working title had been "Nighthawk Postcards from Easy Street," but they shortened it to Nighthawks at the Diner.
The album was recorded "live" in Record Plant Studios, in front of a small invited audience. This gives the record an intimate feeling as Waits spends time telling stories, jokes and explaining the stories behind his songs through seven separate introductions.
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...
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