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Tom Waits: Albums
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Tom Waits (born Thomas Alan Waits, on December 7, 1949 in Pomona, California), is an American author, composer, interpret and actor. The first part of his career showed his roots as a nightclub singer, half speaking and half crooning ballads, often with either a soft jazz background. The 1975 album "Nighthawks at the Diner", recorded in a studio but with a small audience to capture the ambience of a live show, captures this phase of his career, including the lengthy spoken interludes between songs that punctuated his live act.
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Tom Waits' debut album is a minor-key masterpiece filled with songs of late-night loneliness. Within the apparently narrow range of the cocktail bar pianistics and muttered vocals, Waits and producer Jerry ...Read full review
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Real Gone is the unpredictable follow-up to the atmospheric and conceptual Alice and Blood Money, two albums that Tom Waits released simultaneously in the spring of 2002. In an exciting departure from the critically acclaimed Alice and Blood Money, Waits' fevered imagination has spawned a new musical hybrid, grafting together worlds both sonic and ethnic from musical traditions both old and new. The 15 track CD features: primal blues, Jamaican rock-steady grooves, rhythms and melodies both African and Latin, what Waits calls "cubist funk." In that sonic cubism, Waits ingeniously finds common ground with hip-hop's cut and paste aesthetic and incorporates some of its elements into his approach. Many of the tracks on Real Gone were built on Waits' "human beatboxing" on a cassette recorder in his bathroom and bringing those tapes into the studio to have the band play over them. As a result, there are no drums on many of the most driving tracks as his voice provides all of the necessary propulsions. And for the first time, there is no piano.
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Tom Waits released his first album, Closing Time, in 1973. It was a set of bluesy ballads about love gone sour, and established his musical persona as a raspy-voiced, whiskey-soaked denizen of smoky places in the wee hours. His 1976 album Small Change included the signature tunes "Invitation to the Blues" and the "The Piano Has Been Drinking," and subsequent albums earned him a cult following, if not a commercial hit. He turned to acting in the 1980s, working with Francis Ford Coppola in The Outsiders, Rumblefish (both 1983) and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992). Waits was nominated for a 1983 Oscar for his soundtrack to One From the Heart, and critical praise for his three albums Swordfishtrombones (1983), Rain Dogs (1985) and Frank's Wild Years (1987) kept his musical momentum going. During the 1990s he acted in films, released albums and performed on stage, carving out his own little niche of avant garde music and urban drama of the beatnik-noir variety.
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In 1999 Tom Waits returned to the limelight with Mule Variations, his first album in six years and his debut for the independent American label, Anti / Epitaph. The album, which synthesised Waits affinity for the American song tradition with his love of naturalistic sound worlds, was arguably the most direct and intimate recording of his career. It was certainly the most successful, selling over a million copies around the world and winning a Grammy into the bargain. In the UK it was Waits first-ever Top 10 hit.
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Tom Waits has been recording songs for 20 years; his first album, Closing Time, was released in 1973. As well as albums, Waits has released operatic scores and film scores - including the Academy Award-nominated One From The Heart and has acted on screen and stage. An icon of the contemporary music scene and a highly influential songwriter, Waits' songs have been recorded by, among others, Bruce Springsteen, Rod Stewart, Marianne Faithfull and Bob Seger.
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