The One That Got Away

Detail from the cover of Tom Waits' 1976 album Small Change featuring the Mistress of the Dark, Cassandra Peterson. Or does it ? I'm listening to Tom Waits' fantastic album this evening and I'm reminded of that rumor that the stripper on the album cover is none other than Cassandra "Elvira" Peterson. Except no one is quite sure it seems, even Peterson herself who thinks it might be her but has no memory of that particular shoot, such were the joyous hedonism of the 70's. Perhaps more interestingly, Tom name checks Chesty Morgan in the song Pasties and a G-String (At the Two O'Clock Club), and it's fun to speculate whether Tom knew Chesty socially at the time. There's no mention of her in Barney Hoskyns' 2009 biography but I suspect Waits would have known of her as an exotic dancer on the burlesque circuit.