Little Criminals

Warner Bros. released it on 23 September 1977, produced by Lenny Waronker and Russ Titelman and recorded from July to September of that year at Warner Bros. Recording Studios in North Hollywood and The Burbank Studios. Newman wrote, conducted and played keyboards on every track, and Michael Boddicker programmed the synthesizers. Members of the Eagles appear: Glenn Frey plays guitar on two tracks and Joe Walsh on three, Don Henley and Tim Schmit sing backing vocals on one track each, and Frey and JD Souther sing on three. The cover portrait is by Bob Seidemann and shows Newman on the West 7th Street overpass above the I-110 freeway in Los Angeles.

In September 1977 Newman told NME that Short People was purely a joke. The album reached nine on the Billboard 200, his highest place to that date. The New York Times said it was the first Newman album with a full complement of musical witticisms to match the verbal ones. It placed eighth in the 1977 Pazz and Jop critics' poll, and Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums voted it number 468 in 2000. Christgau graded it B+. Newman told the Guardian in 2017 that he wrote Baltimore without having been there, only having passed through on a train and read about the city in National Geographic.