Tom Waits - Blue Skies

This is very early Waits demo from well before he released his debut album. It's amazing on several levels. Firstly it's just a great simple song, for all Waits has spent much of his later career doing the weird and wonderful. You have be a master of the basics of song writing to make all that complicated stuff work successfully and here, at a sickeningly young age, he shows he had that down. Also interesting to hear Wait's voice as a youngster, not so scuffed up. Easy to assume years of cigarettes and whiskey were responsible for that but I'm not so sure. Waits has always been one for swerving away from the mainstream and it's certainly likely that cultivating a gruffer more aggressive timbre was part of a move to be that little bit hipper and less easily accessible. Because the voice thats singing this song.... maybe it doesn't win the X factor...but it's not a million miles away. I'm sure there's some very early recordings of Dylan where his voice sounds different as well. Though I think that's probably common to all young singers who are struggling to find their voice and control it properly.