[He’s got a voice 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.” ~Daniel Durchholz
“I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.” ― Tom Waits
“We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness.
We are monkeys with money and guns.”
― Tom Waits
Neil Young inducts Tom Waits into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame:
The principal riff of “Paint It Black” (almost all classic Rolling Stones songs are highlighted by a killer riff) was played on a sitar by Brian Jones and qualifies as perhaps the most effective use of the Indian instrument in a rock song. The exotic twang was a perfect match for the dark, mysterious Eastern-Indian melody, which sounded a little like a soundtrack to an Indian movie hijacked into hyperdrive.
~Richie Unterberger (allmusic.com)
Alice is an album by Tom Waits, released May 7, 2002 on Epitaph Records (under the Anti sub-label). The album contains the majority of songs written for the play Alice. The adaptation was directed by Robert Wilson, whom Waits had previously worked with on the play The Black Rider, and originally set up at the Thalia Theatre inHamburg in 1992. The play has since been performed in various theatres around the world.
Jimmy Lee Ruffin (born May 7, 1939) is an American soul singer, and elder brother of David Ruffin of The Temptations. He had several hit records between the 1960s and 1980s, the most successful being “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted”.
Edward Thomas “Eddie” Rabbitt (November 27, 1941 – May 7, 1998) was an American singer-songwriter and musician. His career began as a songwriter in the late 1960s, springboarding to a recording career after composing hits such as “Kentucky Rain” for Elvis Presley in 1970 and “Pure Love” for Ronnie Milsap in 1974. Later in the 1970s, Rabbitt helped to develop the crossover-influenced sound of country music prevalent in the 1980s with such hits as “Suspicions” and “Every Which Way but Loose.” His duets “Both to Each Other (Friends and Lovers)” and “You and I”, with Juice Newton and Crystal Gayle respectively, later appeared on the soap operasDays of Our Lives and All My Children.
My Ride’s Here is the eleventh studio album by American singer/songwriter Warren Zevon, released May 7, 2002. Zevon described it as “a meditation on death”; it was released several months before Zevon was diagnosed with terminal mesothelioma.
Brian Jones plucked the haunting sitar melody at the 1966 L.A. session for this classic. Bill Wyman added klezmer-flavored organ; studio legend Jack Nitzsche played the gypsy-style piano. “Brian had pretty much given up on the guitar by then,” said Richards. “If there was [another] instrument around, he had to be able to get something out of it. It gave the Stones on record a lot of different textures.”
~rollingstone.com
The principal riff of “Paint It Black” (almost all classic Rolling Stones songs are highlighted by a killer riff) was played on a sitar by Brian Jones and qualifies as perhaps the most effective use of the Indian instrument in a rock song. The exotic twang was a perfect match for the dark, mysterious Eastern-Indian melody, which sounded a little like a soundtrack to an Indian movie hijacked into hyperdrive.
~Richie Unterberger (allmusic.com)
Original version:
Wikipedia:
from the album Aftermath
B-side
“Stupid Girl” (US)
“Long Long While” (UK)
Released
7 May 1966 (US)
13 May 1966 (UK)
Format
7″
Recorded
6–9 March 1966
Genre
Psychedelic rock, raga rock
Length
3:45 (mono single mix)
3:22 (stereo album mix)
Label
London 45-LON.901 (US)
Decca F.12395 (UK)
Writer(s)
Jagger/Richards
Producer
Andrew Loog Oldham
“Paint It, Black” is a song released by The Rolling Stones on 13 May 1966 (7 May 1966 – US) as the first single from the US version of their fourth album Aftermath. It was originally titled “Paint It Black” without a comma. Keith Richards has stated that the comma was added by the record label, Decca.
At a book signing in Nashville in 2001, Bill Wyman explained that the comma was simply a typographical error that stuck.
The song was written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Mick Jagger wrote the lyrics and Keith Richards wrote the music.
Bill Wyman claims in his books that the song was a group effort although it was credited to Jagger/Richards.
The single reached number one in both the United States and the United Kingdom charts in 1966.
In 2004 it was ranked number 176 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In the US and UK, it was the first number one single to feature a sitar.
Live version:
Musicians:
Mick Jagger – lead vocals
Brian Jones – sitar, percussion
Keith Richards – electric guitar, acoustic guitar, backing vocals
[He’s got a voice 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.”
~Daniel Durchholz
“I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.”
― Tom Waits
“We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness.
We are monkeys with money and guns.”
― Tom Waits
Neil Young inducts Tom Waits into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame:
Clap Hands:
From Wikipedia:
Birth name
Thomas Alan Waits
Born
December 7, 1949 (age 63)
Pomona, California,United States
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 musical plays and has acted in supporting roles in films including Paradise Alley and Bram Stoker’s Dracula; he also starred in the 1986 film Down by Law. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his soundtrack work on One from the Heart.
16 shells from a thirty-ought-six – live 85:
Lyrically, Waits’ songs frequently present atmospheric portrayals 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”, performed by the Eagles, and “Downtown Train”, performed 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.
Waits lives in Sonoma County, California with his wife, Kathleen Brennan, and three children.
Alice – Live from Amsterdam 2004:
Album of the day:
Swordfishtrombones (1983)
……. The music can be primitive, moving to odd time signatures, while Waits alternately howls and wheezes in his gravelly bass voice. He seems to have moved on from Hoagy Carmichael and Louis Armstrong to Kurt Weill and Howlin’ Wolf (as impersonated by Captain Beefheart). Waits seems to have had trouble interesting a record label in the album, which was cut 13 months before it was released, but when it appeared, rock critics predictably raved: after all, it sounded weird and it didn’t have a chance of selling. Actually, it did make the bottom of the best-seller charts, like most of Waits’ albums, and now that he was with a label based in Europe, even charted there. Artistically, Swordfishtrombones marked an evolution of which Waits had not seemed capable (though there were hints of this sound on his last two Asylum albums), and in career terms it reinvented him.
~William Ruhlmann (allmusic.com)
