Tom Waits

Thomas Alan Waits (born December 7, 1949) is an American singer-songwriter, musician, composer and actor. His distinctive deep gravelly voice was described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding as though "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 has built up a distinctive musical persona with his trademark growl, his incorporation of pre-rock music styles such as blues, jazz, and vaudeville, and experimental.\n', '

Waits was raised in Whittier, California, and moved to San Diego with his family at the age of 12. 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 secured work as a songwriter before gaining a recording contract with Asylum Records and producing his first albums, Closing Time (1973)…