It was Tom Waits Birthday on 12/7. He turned 69 this year (2018). Our Most Excellent Host, Big Kev did a special show featuring Tom Waits’ music with some inside stories and cool trivia on his birthday. You can listen anytime below.
If you don’t know Tom Waits it’s time to get hip. He’s a national treasure and has been for almost 50 years.
He always been the “purveyor of cool” when it comes to all kinds of music. He has touches of jazz in his style as well as folk, R&B, and New Jersey “roots” in his music.
His “one-of-a-kind” voice is all his own and brings a “Beat Generation” vibe to all his songs.
He’s also written some great ones. His “Jersey Girl” has been covered by no one less than Bruce Springsteen himself, a New Jersey poet himself. But many others have covered his tunes, some of whom can be heard in the podcast below.
Waits was raised in a middle-class family in Whittier, California and then San Diego. Inspired by Bob Dylan and the Beat Generation, as a teenager he began singing on the San Diego folk music scene. Relocating to Los Angeles, he worked as a songwriter before signing a recording contract with Asylum Records.
His first albums, the jazz-oriented Closing Time (1973) and The Heart of Saturday Night (1974), reflected his lyrical interest in nightlife, poverty, and criminality. Repeatedly touring the U.S., Europe, and Japan, he attracted greater critical recognition and commercial success with Small Change (1976), which he followed with Blue Valentine (1978) and Heartattack and Vine (1980). He produced the soundtrack for Francis Ford Coppola‘s 1981 film One from the Heart and subsequently made cameo appearances in several Coppola films.
In the early 1980s, Waits married Kathleen Brennan, broke from his manager and record label, and moved to New York City. Under Brennan’s influence, he pursued a new musical aesthetic, reflected in a series of albums released by Island Records: Swordfishtrombones (1983), Rain Dogs (1985), and Franks Wild Years (1987). He continued appearing in film, taking a leading role in Jim Jarmusch‘s Down by Law (1986). In the 1990s, his albums—Bone Machine (1992), The Black Rider (1993), and Mule Variations (1999)—earned him increasing critical acclaim and various Grammy Awards. In the late 1990s he switched to the record label Anti-, who released Blood Money (2002), Alice (2002), Real Gone (2004), and Bad as Me (2011).
Waits’ albums have met with mixed commercial success in the U.S., although have occasionally achieved gold album sales status in other countries. He has a cult following and has influenced subsequent singer-songwriters, despite having little radio or music video support. In 2011, Waits was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was included among the 2010 list of Rolling Stone‘s 100 Greatest Singers, as well as the 2015 list of Rolling Stone‘s 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time.
