Tom Waits – $25 million
Greatest Hits: Closing Time, Somewhere
Tom Waits is a singer-songwriter and actress who was born in California. He is famed for his unique, heavy voice, and punk lyrics. He concentrated in jazz in the 1970s, but he also had blues and vaudeville roots as well. The Beat Generation and Bob Dylan became his inspirations. In San Diego, he started singing and relocated to LA to negotiate an asylum contract. His first songs, which represented his first commercially popular release, included Closing Time, Saturday Night’s Heart, and Minor Change. Waits wrote for Francis Ford Coppola’s One the Heart Score.
Tom Waits
Dan Penn – $1 million
Greatest Hits: Cry Like a Baby, The Dark End of the Street
He worked with artists such as The Box Tops, Chips Moman, Oldham Spooner. As he was camera-shy, he favored songwriting to showmanship. His writing relationship was successful with Chips Moman for Press Publishing Business, but the pair had a fall-out that ended the partnership, which was characterized as “short-lived” but “intense.” One of his most successful to date is his work with Aretha Franklin.
Dan Penn
