Songfacts®:

• This song about a failed relationship was originally featured on the soundtrack for the 1996 movie Dead Man Walking. It later was included on the limited edition 3-CD set of Tom Waits' 2006 album Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards.
• The song was covered by the Contemporary Alternative Country band The Steel Wheels for their 2013 No More Rain album. Their lead vocalist and primary songwriter Trent Wagler told Songfacts: "What initially attracted me to that song was the almost onomatopoeic way that Tom Waits uses words. He's almost Shakespearean in his writing: it's sounds of language instead of even the words themselves. If you study acting or Shakespeare, you'll get that sense - you'll see that he'll use a number of hard syllables or hard consonants to mean there's anger underneath it, and that's how you get the sense for where it's coming from. The first line of that song was 'Dot King was whittled from the bone of Cain,' there's all this [makes onomatopoeic sounds]. You know, it's percussive in its language."