Tom Waits wrote about his 28 most cherished albums of all time for the Observer (here and here) in 2005. Here is his selection, in roughly chronological order.
Prison Songs: Murderous Home
(The Alan Lomax Collection)
Various artists
1997, Rounder Select
Thomas Alan “Tom” Waits (born December 7, 1949) is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz 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.” With this trademark growl, his incorporation of pre-rock music styles such as blues, jazz, and vaudeville, and experimental tendencies verging on industrial music, Waits has built up a distinctive musical persona. (Wikipedia.)
Alternatively, as the AllMusic puts it, “a neo-beatnik songwriter who grew weirder and wilder in the ’80s, earning a cult following that only grew larger as the years passed”.
Source: The Observer, The Observer
Last checked on: 28 September 2015
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