Uploaded April 2017 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago

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Tom Waits - On the Nickel
Photographer - Dorothea Lange [cover: Migrant Mother]
Composer - Tom Waits
Album - Heartattack and Vine (1980)
Label - Asylum
Personnel:
Tom Waits - Vocals, Electric Guitar, Piano
Arranged By [Orchestra], Conductor [Orchestra] – Bob Alcivar
Piano – Michael Lang
The photograph that has become known as "Migrant Mother" is one of a series of photographs that Dorothea Lange made of Florence Owens Thompson and her children in February or March of 1936 in Nipomo, California. Lange was concluding a month's trip photographing migratory farm labor around the state for what was then the Resettlement Administration. In 1960, Lange gave this account of the experience:
"I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean- to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it." (From: Popular Photography, Feb. 1960).


"Sticks and stones will break my bones but always will be true
And when your mama's dead and gone I'll sing this lullabye just for you
And what becomes of all the little boys who never comb their hair
They're lined up all around the block on the nickel over there
So you better bring a bucket, there's a hole in the pail
And if you don't get my letter then you'll know that I'm in jail
And what becomes of all the little boys who never say their prayers
They're sleepin' like a baby on the nickel over there
And if you chew tobacco, wish upon a star
You'll find out where the scarecrows sit just like punchlines between the cars
And I know a place where a royal flush can never beat a pair
Even Thomas Jefferson is on the nickel over there
Ring around a Rosie, you're sleepin' in the rain
And you're always late for supper and man you let me down, let me down again
I thought I heard a mockingbird, Roosevelt knows where
You can skip the light with Grady Tuck on the nickel over there
So what becomes of all the little boys who run away from home
The world just keeps gettin' bigger, once you get out on your own
So here's to all the little boys, the sandman takes you where
You'll be sleepin' with a pillowman on the nickel over there
So let's climb up through that button hole and we'll fall right up the stairs
And I'll show you where the short dogs grow on the nickel over there"

_____Tom Waits_____