Frank Sinatra - In the Wee Small Hours

Top 28 albums of all time, by Tom Waits

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.


Exile on Main St. Rolling Stones

The Rolling Stones
1972, Rolling Stones Records

[amazon template=custom_thumbnail&asin=B000001G1E&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Star Time James Brown]
[amazon text=Star Time&template=custom_title&asin=B000001G1E&search_text=%TITLE%&title=Star Time James Brown]
[amazon text=James Brown&template=custom_search&search_text=%TITLE%&title=James Brown] 1991, Polydor
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Texas-Czech, Bohemian-Moravian Bands

Various artists
1993, Folk Lyric

The Yellow Shark Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa
1993, Barking Pumpkin

Aria: A Passion for Opera

Various artists
1994, EMI Classics

Prison Songs: Murderous Home (The Alan Lomax Collection)

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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