Tom Waits

Tom Waits started out in the early 1970s as a piano-based barroom balladeer with a penchant for beat poetry and West Coast jazz. By the late '80s he had mutated into a brilliantly adventurous artist whose style suggested an amalgam of Howlin' Wolf, Kurt Weill, and Captain Beefheart. Ever the theatrical figure, Waits also found success as an actor in several films. He's also worked on numerous theatrical/musical projects with avant-garde theater king Robert Wilson. Though generally regarded as a cult artist, he's widely respected, and everyone from Rod Stewart to the Eagles to the Ramones has covered his songs.

• Bruce Springsteen
• Chuck E. Weiss
• John Prine
• Keith Richards
• Leonard Cohen
• Lou Reed
• Loudon Wainwright III
• Marc Ribot's Rootless Cosmopolitans
• Marianne Faithfull
• Patti Smith
• Ralph Carney/David Hild/Kramer
• Rickie Lee Jones
• The Lounge Lizards
• Warren Zevon

• Bob Dylan
• Captain Beefheart
• Charles Brown
• Charles Bukowski
• Hoagy Carmichael
• Howlin' Wolf
• Jack Kerouac
• Kurt Weill/Ira Gershwin
• Memphis Slim/Willie Dixon
• Mose Allison
• Muddy Waters
• Randy Newman
• Thelonious Monk

• Calexico
• Dave Alvin
• Elvis Costello & The Attractions
• Frank Tedesso
• Gallon Drunk
• Giant Sand
• Jim Allen
• Johnny Dowd
• Los Lobos
• Men & Volts
• Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
• Opal Foxx Quartet
• Richard Julian
• Thin White Rope
• Victoria Williams

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