"Diamond In Your Mind"

'Orphans: Bonus disc', 2008

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Today kicks off a trio of songs that start with “Diamond.” Quick — can you name ‘em all without cheating?

The first one might just be the best, even though it’s the only one that’s not on a proper album. It’s not even on the proper Orphans either — it was released as an exclusive bonus track on the subsequent vinyl edition.

Clued-in Tom Waits fans, though, heard the song a few years earlier. First, it had been performed in the theatrical version of the 2000 Waits-Robert Wilson play Woyzeck (more on that here and here). You can hear that version below, featuring Tom along with the show’s cast:

The first properly version released, though, came out on Don’t Give Up on Me, a high-profile 2001 Solomon Burke comeback album on Anti Records (also Tom’s label) and Fat Possum that saw original songs contributed by Burke admirers from Bob Dylan to Van Morrison. Burke’s version is still, to my money, the definitive version. I suspect Tom himself might agree.

“I tried to get a little Satchmo in there,” Burke said of his delivery in an interview. “I can just imagine in my mind him singing this song.”

In another interview, Burke told a story about his one phone call with Waits about it. Specifically, Burke objected to this lyric:

Zerelda Samuels said she ain't never prayed 
’Til her right arm was blown off in a Pinkerton raid

“I don't care how big of a sinner you are: If someone cuts off your arm, you are going to pray to God,” Burke recalled. “They said, ‘With all due respect, Dr Burke, you do not change the words to a Tom Waits song.’ I told them, ‘With all due respect, as a man of God, I am telling you this song is religiously incorrect.’ We stopped the whole session until we got a call back from him, and he said, ‘Okay.’”

Not to poke holes in this story, but doesn’t “she ain't never prayed ’til her right arm was blown off” imply she did pray then? Thus negating Burke’s objection?

Maybe the early lyrics Waits sent him were different. In the Orphans version, for instance, the line is now “Zerelda Samuels said she ain't never prayed since her right arm was blown off.” True, that also seems like she prayed when her right arm was blown off. But if Waits was tweaking the line that much, maybe the version Burke got sent was something else.

Either way, Burke’s version divorces the praying and the arm being blown off entirely:

Zerelda Samuel said she almost never prayed 
Said she lost her right arm, blown off in a Pinkerton raid

For MOJO magazine, reporter Don Waller visited Burke in the studio. He doesn’t mention the lyric issue, but he does reference the second part of that same verse: “Then they lashed her to a windmill with old 3-fingered Dave / Now she's 102, drinking mint juleps in the shade.” Here’s how he sets the scene of Burke and his band recording this song:

For the next several minutes, the five musicians in Hollywood's Sound Factory studio take Tom Waits' rasping, wheezing demo of the previously unreleased Diamond In Your Mind to a woozy midnight service at a storefront church; Burke tossing an extra shovelful of grit into his customary coffee n' cream vocals as he negotiates the eccentric true-life tales of Waits' relatives that make up the tune's verses. "What's this lady's name here?" Burke asks between takes. "Zazu? Not Sally Sue? 'Cos it says here she's 101 years old. She's been waiting 100 years to hear her name on a record, so I better get it right." And the next take, he does.