Hacker News Reader

Comment by ants_everywhere | Hacker News Reader

I love Tom Waits, but I always just assumed he was doing an impression of the other raspy blues artists that came before like

Willie Williams https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1KV51qIdI0

Howlin Wolf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ri7TcukAJ8

or Screamin Jay Hawkins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kGPhpvqtOc

It surprises me a little because the Dorito commercial sounds like a fairly generic blues backing track and a raspy voiced singer. From the article, there's an indication that Doritos was looking to replicate the sound and feel of the song, and they were aware of the legal concern. But to me it kind of sounds like Tom Waits is doing an impersonation, the Doritos song is doing an impersonation, but it's not totally obvious from the song that the Doritos impersonation necessarily goes via Tom Waits rather than back to the original source material.

View on HN

I used to imitate Tom Waits when I'd play Tom Waits songs on the piano. And Leonard Cohen when I played his songs. But after 30 years of smoking I finally achieved my long term goal of just sounding like a cross between the two of them without trying. You can't really own smoker's growl. The best you can do is rent it for a few years.

No, he's been doing his own thing, but he's drawn inspiration from, or payed homage to, blues, jazz, r&b, bar pianists, country and so on.

See e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG0p2JHcsQ0 . It's playful, original, pulls from a lot of previous artistic work.

Later on he does the soundtrack for The Black Rider, changes record label and gets the freedom to dabble in post-punk and weirder stuff.

I didn't read the case, but in a lot of these type of cases, there are memos or emails that make the case more than if you were just listening to the commercial. Like in the Scarlett Johansson case where they reached out to her to do the voice. The may have had internal memos that called the commercial the "Tom Waits Commercial" or the like. They may have had internal legal memos advising that they could be sued, etc.

Also, Captain Beefheart.

A man of culture I see. Yeah, any of Captain Beefheart's more bluesy numbers he is doing thr same thing.

Like Plastic Factory https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soV8IcTzuj8

Totally underrated record. Trout Mask Replica gets all the love, but that one's an utter banger.

But without Beefheart's Little Richard genes

Did you read the link?

The commercial was using a tom waits song sung by an artist who impersonated Tom waits and the folks involved discussed the potential legal implications and did it anyways.

I did read the article and listened to the Doritos song as I mentioned in my comment. I agrree the statements about how they came up with the song are damning, as I mentioned. But they aren't doing a Tom Waits song.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com