Tom Waits
Overview
Thomas Alan "Tom" Waits 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
Bourbon whiskey
Bourbon is a type of American whiskey – a barrel-aged distilled spirit made primarily from corn. The name of the spirit derives from its historical association with an area known as Old Bourbon, around what is now Bourbon County, Kentucky . It has been produced since the 18th century...

, 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
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...

 styles such as blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...

, jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

, and vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...

, and experimental tendencies verging on industrial music
Industrial music
Industrial music is a style of experimental music that draws on transgressive and provocative themes. The term was coined in the mid-1970s with the founding of Industrial Records by the band Throbbing Gristle, and the creation of the slogan "industrial music for industrial people". In general, the...

, Waits has built up a distinctive musical persona.
Quotations

Don't you know there ain't no devil, there's just God when he's drunk.

"Heartattack and Vine", Heartattack and Vine (1980)

I'm so goddamn horny, the crack of dawn better be careful around me!

Nighthawks at the Diner (1975)

She called me Hen Fap Thomas, said that I was something that she needed to have!

Nighthawks at the Diner (1975)

Your veal cutlet gets up off the plate, It walks down to end of the counter and beat the shit out of my cup of coffee. I guess the coffee just wasn't strong enough to defend itself.

Nighthawks at the Diner (1975)

I don't have a drinking problem ‘cept when I can't get a drink.

"Bad Liver and a Broken Heart", Small Change (1976).

And the things you can’t remember tell the things you can’t forget that history puts a saint in every dream.

"Time", Rain Dogs (1985)

The piano has been drinking, not me.

"The Piano Has Been Drinking", Small Change (1976)

If there's one thing you can say about mankind, there's nothing kind about man.

"Misery is the River of the World", Blood Money (2002).

What's he building in there? We have a right to know.

"What's He Building in There", Mule Variations (1999)

Come down off the cross, we can use the wood.

"Come On Up To The House", Mule Variations (1999)

 
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