Actors - Tom Waits

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	Actors - Tom Waits

Thomas Alan Waits (born December 7, 1949) is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor.

Waits has a distinctive voice, described by the MusicHound Rock Album Guide as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months and then taken outside and run over with a car." (Waits's voice was also described in one court decision as follows: "Waits has a raspy, gravelly singing voice, described by one fan as 'like how you'd sound if you drank a quart of bourbon, smoked a pack of cigarettes and swallowed a pack of razor blades... Late at night. After not sleeping for three days.'" Waits v. Frito-Lay, Inc., 978 F.2d 1093 (1992 9th Cir.)) With this trademark growl, as well as his experimental tendencies and a love of pre-rock Americana styles such as blues, jazz, and Vaudeville, Waits has built up a distinctive musical persona.

Lyrically, Waits's songs are known for atmospheric portrayals of bizarre, seedy characters and places, although he has also shown a penchant for more conventional and touching ballads. He has a cult following and has influenced subsequent songwriters, despite having little radio or music video support. His songs are best known to the general public in the form of cover versions by more visible artists, such as Eagles, The Ramones, Bruce Springsteen, and Rod Stewart. Although Waits's albums have met with mixed commercial success in his native United States, they have occasionally achieved gold album sales status in other countries.

Waits has also worked as a composer for movies and musical plays and as a supporting actor in films, including Short Cuts
, The Two Jakes
, The Fisher King, Mystery Men
, Bram Stoker's Dracula
and Coffee and Cigarettes
. He also had a starring role in the film Down By Law
.

Early career

Born in Pomona, California to parents of Scottish, Irish, and Norwegian descent, Tom Waits began his recording career in 1971, after he relocated to Los Angeles and signed with Herb Cohen, who was also the manager of Frank Zappa.

After numerous abortive recording sessions, Waits's first record, the melancholic, country-tinged Closing Time, was issued in 1973. While it received warm reviews, he did not gain widespread attention until his Ol' 55 was recorded by the Eagles in 1974. The Heart of Saturday Night, released in 1974, showed Waits's roots as a nightclub singer, with half-spoken and half-crooned ballads, often accompanied with a jazz background.

The 1975 album Nighthawks at the Diner, recorded in a studio with a small audience to capture the ambiance of a live show, captures this phase of his career, including the lengthy spoken interludes between songs that punctuated his live act. Regarding his music of this era, Waits reported that "I wasn't thrilled by Blue Cheer, so I found an alternative, even if it was Bing Crosby."

Small Change (1976), featuring famed drummer Shelly Manne, was more jazz influenced, and songs such as "The Piano Has Been Drinking" and "Bad Liver and a Broken Heart" cemented Waits's hard-living reputation, with a lyrical style that owed influence to Raymond Chandler and Charles Bukowski. Foreign Affairs (1977) and Blue Valentine (1978) were in a similar vein, but showed further refinement of his artistic voice. It was around this time that Waits had a high-profile romantic relationship with Rickie Lee Jones (who appears on the album cover of Blue Valentine).

1980 saw the release of Heartattack and Vine. Though not entirely unprecedented, the album's gritty rhythm and blues sound was different for Waits, and foreshadowed the major changes in his music that would follow several years later. The same year, he began a long working relationship with Francis Ford Coppola, who asked Waits to provide music for his film One From The Heart. Waits worked with singer/songwriter Crystal Gayle as his vocal foil for the album.

Waits began his acting career with his appearance in Sylvester Stallone's 1978 film Paradise Alley and later appeared in Coppola's The Outsiders
. He starred in Jim Jarmusch's Down By Law in 1986, and has played supporting roles in the films Rumble Fish
, The Cotton Club
, Mystery Men
, Coffee and Cigarettes
(as himself) and Dracula
(as Dracula's insane thrall Renfield).

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Tom Waits ]

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Actors - Tom Waits

Early career

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