One From The Heart (1982)

One From The Heart (1982)

The soundtrack to the Francis Ford Coppola film of the same name, One From The Heart features the unlikely pairing of Waits with country-pop star Crystal Gayle. The songs, all written by Waits, reiterate the prevailing wisdom that, had he been born thirty years earlier, Waits could have enjoyed a very prosperous career writing MGM musicals. This is no put-down: Songs like “Picking Up After You” and “I Beg Your Pardon” sound more like actual standards than facsimiles of standards; like Stephin Merritt, Waits is the rare contemporary songwriter who takes as many cues from Rodgers and Hammerstein as from Jagger and Richards, and is comfortable enough within the tradition to eschew the irony that otherwise would have rendered these tunes goofy and anachronistic. It’s also not bad listening, especially “You Can’t Unring A Bell,” with its hard-panned floor toms and walking bass offering a glimpse of the weirder Tom Waits we know and love, and a couple of brief appearances by Dennis Budimir, whose impressive guitar runs evoke a twinkling Lenny Breu. Still, the question remains: who is this for, exactly? Fans of Waits’ Epitaph-era aren’t exactly keeping up with Dianne Reeves albums, while it’s hard to imagine many 21st century easy listeners choosing One From The Heart over any of the several Verve box sets available; Waits may be our generation’s Stephen Foster, but Crystal Gayle is no one’s idea of Judy Garland, after all.