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Inspired by the work of Bob Dylan and the Beat Generation, he began singing on the San Diego folk circuit. He relocated to Los Angeles in 1972, where he worked as a songwriter before signing a recording contract with Asylum Records.
Oct 25, 2024 · Born into a middle-class California family but enamoured of the bohemian lifestyle depicted in Beat literature, Waits lived in his car and in seedy Los Angeles hotels as he embarked on his career. His raspy vocals, delivered in his signature growl, evoked the late-night atmosphere of the smoky clubs in which he first performed in the late 1960s.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Jul 12, 2023 · Always one for a wry bit of humor, Waits changed his approach in 1976 and took his voice from honey-spread to crag-like. Jagged, rough. But why?
- Jacob Uitti
- 45 min
- Senior Writer
Mar 1, 2011 · The son of two schoolteachers, Tom Waits was born in 1949 in Pomona, Calif. His early life, including his first job at Napoleone Pizza House, influenced his later albums.
Aug 2, 2021 · Videos by American Songwriter. When Waits applies this proclivity to the subject of songwriting, what we get is pure gold. Because, as songwriters know well, it’s a subject that isn’t easy to...
Dec 7, 2019 · He was 29 when he took his first role as Mumbles, a lowlife barfly piano player in Paradise Alley (Stallone, 1978). And the film presents him in full underworld form as a man beyond his years ...
Nov 13, 2017 · Brennan was actually working as a script analyst at 20th Century Fox, and Waits was cloistered in an adjacent room writing the soundtrack to the Francis Ford Coppola movie One From The Heart. Coppola called him “the prince of melancholy”, and it was this reputation that had helped Waits write himself into a corner.
