"Children's Story"
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“Children’s Story” is one of those tracks on the “Bastards” final disc of Orphans that’s not really a song. The non-sung bastards also include jokes (“Missing My Son”), character studies (“The Pontiac”), spoken-word poems (“First Kiss”), and short stories (“Nirvana”). We’ve already touched on another of them: “Army Ants.”
“Children’s Story” is based on the 1800s Georg Büchner play Woyzeck. If that title sounds familiar, it’s because Tom Waits and Robert Wilson turned it into a stage musical in 2000. Tom recorded the songs himself for his 2002 album Blood Money. We’ve touched on that a bit already too: “All the World Is Green,” “Another Man’s Vine.” The Orphans booklet doesn’t include much information on where its tracks come from, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Tom recorded “Children’s Story” for Blood Money originally.
In a sense, “Children’s Story” is a cover. It’s a straight English translation of a story that, in Büchner’s original play, a grandmother tells her family. I think Tom adds the little closing flourish (“okay there's your story night night”), but the rest was written in the 1830s. GradeSaver.com’s notes on the play’s characters give a little more context:
Grandmother
Either Marie's mother and her child's grandmother, or an old woman of the neighborhood. She tells Marie and the children a 'black fairy tale' or 'anti-fairy tale' about a poor orphan who is sad and lonely for all eternity with absolutely no hope for bettering his situation. Although she appears only once and briefly, her story encapsulates Buchner's tragic, fatalistic point of view about man's existence and the fate of the lower class.
Over on YouTube, I found a beautiful little video depicting the story, with the text in the original German and music by Japanese jazz trumpeter Jun Miyake. Listen to Tom tell the story to get the plot if you don’t know it (and don’t speak German), then watch this video. Then do what I’m about to and go check out that Jun Miyake trumpet album.