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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. He has worked as a composer for movies and musicals and has acted in supporting roles in films, including ''Paradise Alley'' and ''Bram Stoker's Dracula''. He also starred in Jim Jarmusch's 1986 film ''Down by Law''. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his soundtrack work on ''One from the Heart''. Waits' lyrics frequently present atmospheric portraits of grotesque, often seedy characters and places—although he has also shown a penchant for more conventional ballads. He has a cult following and has influenced subsequent songwriters despite having little radio or music video support. His songs are best-known through cover versions by more commercial artists: "Jersey Girl", performed by Bruce Springsteen, "Ol' '55", by the Eagles, and "Downtown Train", by Rod Stewart. Although Waits' albums have met with mixed commercial success in his native United States, they have occasionally achieved gold album sales status in other countries. He has been nominated for a number of major music awards and has won Grammy Awards for two albums, ''Bone Machine'' and ''Mule Variations''. In 2011, Waits was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He is also included among the 2010 list of ''Rolling Stone''s 100 Greatest Singers.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/100-greatest-singers-of-all-time-19691231 )〕 and the 2015 list of ''Rolling Stone''s 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time. Waits lives in Sonoma County, California, with his wife and musical collaborator Kathleen Brennan, and three children. ==Early life and musical beginnings== Waits was born at Park Avenue Hospital in Pomona, California, the son of Alma Fern (née Johnson) McMurray and Jesse Frank Waits, both schoolteachers.〔Montadon, Mac, "Timeline and Discography" in ''Innocent When You Dream'', p.385〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】 title= Tom Waits Timeline: 1949–1975 )〕 After Waits' parents divorced in 1960, he lived with his mother in Whittier, and then moved to National City, in San Diego County, near the Mexico–United States border.〔http://www.sandiegoreader.com/bands/tom-waits/〕 Waits, who taught himself how to play the piano on a neighbor's instrument, often took trips to Mexico with his father, who taught Spanish. He would later say that he found his love of music during these trips through a Mexican ballad that was "probably a Ranchera, you know, on the car radio with my dad."〔Wilonsky, Robert, "The Variations of Tom Waits", in Montandon, ''Innocent When You dream'', p.213〕 By 1965, while attending at Hilltop High School in Chula Vista,〔 Waits was playing in an R&B/soul band called The Systems and had begun his first job at Napoleone Pizza House in National City (about which he would later sing on "I Can't Wait to Get Off Work (And See My Baby on Montgomery Avenue)" from ''Small Change'' and "The Ghosts of Saturday Night (After Hours at Napoleone's Pizza House)" on ''The Heart of Saturday Night'').〔 He later admitted that he was not a fan of the 1960s music scene, stating, "I wasn't thrilled by Blue Cheer, so I found an alternative, even if it was Bing Crosby."〔(【引用サイトリンク】 title=Tom Waits Quotes: Influences and favourites )〕 Five years later, he was working as a doorman at the Heritage nightclub in San Diego—where artists of every genre performed—when he did his first paid gig for $6.〔 A fan of Bob Dylan, Lord Buckley, Jack Kerouac, Louis Armstrong, Howlin' Wolf, and Charles Bukowski, Waits began developing his own idiosyncratic musical style. After serving with the United States Coast Guard, he took his newly formed act to Monday nights at The Troubadour in Los Angeles, where musicians would line up all day for the opportunity to perform on stage that night. In 1971, Waits moved to the Echo Park neighborhood of L.A. (at the time, also home to musicians Glenn Frey of the Eagles, J. D. Souther, Jackson Browne, and Frank Zappa) and signed with Herb Cohen at the age of 21. From August to December 1971, Waits made a series of demo recordings for Zappa and Cohen's Bizarre/Straight label, including many songs for which he would later become known. These early tracks were released twenty years later on ''The Early Years, Volume One'' and ''Volume Two''. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Tom Waits」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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