The first TW song I heard was "Step Right Up" - upright bass & saxophone with lyrics from every commercial jingle you've ever heard. I've been hooked on TW ever since.
Another GREAT Tom Waits album "Blue Valentine" has a back cover photo of TW pressing a young Ricki Lee Jones up against a car. At one time, TW and RLJ were a couple.
Jones and her lover/fellow songwriter Tom Waits spent a lot of time hanging out with their friend Chuck E. Weiss at the seedy Tropicana Motel in Los Angeles. Eventually Weiss, affectionately referred to as "Chuck E." disappeared. Later Weiss called the apartment where Jones and Waits lived. Waits took the call, at which time Weiss explained the reason for his disappearance, he was now in Denver, and had moved there because he had fallen in love with a cousin in Colorado. Waits hung up, then explained to Jones, "Chuck E.’s in love." Jones liked the sound of the sentence and wrote a song around it. Although toward the end of "Chuck E.’s In Love" the lyrics state, "Chuck E.’s in love with the little girl singing this song," the twist ending is fictional; Jones was never the girl with whom Chuck E. was in love
I will definitely look up Tom Waits.