HAPPY BIRTHDAY TOM!!

TOM WAITS, BORN DECEMBER 7, 1949 (pretty auspicious birthday, eh?)
It's the birthday of the singer, songwriter and actor Tom Waits, (books by this author) born in Pomona, California (1949). As a teenager, his parents moved around a lot, and instead of making friends, Waits became obsessed with music. He didn't listen to rock and roll like his classmates. He was more interested in older music: George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Frank Sinatra, Jerome Kern, Cab Calloway, and the old Nat "King" Cole Trio. He later said, "I ... slept right through the '60s. Never went through an identity crisis. Never had no Jimi Hendrix posters on the wall, never ate granola, never had any incense."
Out of high school he worked odd jobs, as a fireman, a cab driver, a gas station attendant. He said, "[At one point] I worked in a restaurant ... [as] dishwasher, waiter, cook, plumber, janitor — everything. They called me Speed-O-Flash." He wasn't sure what he wanted to do with his life until 1968, when he read On the Road by Jack Kerouac. The book made him want to do something big, and a few weeks later he saw a local guy he knew playing jazz at a nightclub, and he realized that he needed to start making his own music. He became known for lyrics that resembled beat poetry, and in his performances, Waits played a kind of hobo wise man, singing in a gravelly, cigarette-scarred voice that made him sound much older than 25.