Charles Edward Weiss was an American songwriter and vocalist. A fixture on the Los Angeles scene, Weiss was known for an eclectic mix of blues, beat poetry, and rock and roll. His music included strains of every rhythmic style from nursery rhymes to zydeco.
Weiss' gravestone in Denver's Fairmount Cemetery
Thomas Alan Waits is an American musician, composer, songwriter, and actor. His lyrics often focus on the underbelly of society and are delivered in his trademark deep, gravelly voice. He began in the folk scene during the 1970s, but his music since the 1980s has reflected the influence of such diverse genres as rock, Delta blues, opera, vaudeville, cabaret, funk, hip hop and experimental techniques verging on industrial music. Per The Wall Street Journal, Waits “has composed a body of work that’s at least comparable to any songwriter’s in pop today. A keen, sensitive and sympathetic chronicler of the adrift and downtrodden, Mr. Waits creates three-dimensional characters who, even in their confusion and despair, are capable of insight and startling points of view. Their stories are accompanied by music that’s unlike any other in pop history.”
Waits c. 1974–75
Waits as a high-school senior at Hilltop High School in 1967. He dropped out at the age of 18.
Waits in an early publicity photo for Asylum Records, 1973
The Troubadour in West Hollywood, where Waits's performances brought him to the attention of Herb Cohen and David Geffen