Tom Waits – $25 million
Greatest Hits: Closing Time, Somewhere
Tom Waits is a singer-songwriter and actor who was born in California. He is renowned for his distinctive, heavy sound and punk lyrics. He specialized in jazz in the 1970s, but he also had blues and vaudeville influences as well. The Beat Generation and Bob Dylan are his inspirations. In San Diego, he began singing and moved to LA to sign an asylum deal. His first albums, which marked his first commercially successful album, included Closing Time, Saturday Night’s Heart, and Small 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 collaborated with artists such as The Box Tops, Chips Moman, Oldham Spooner. As he was camera-shy, he preferred songwriting to showmanship. His writing relationship was successful with Chips Moman for Press Publishing Company, although the pair had a fall-out that did end the joint venture, which was characterized as “short-lived” but “intense.” One of his most successful to date is his collaboration with Aretha Franklin.
Dan Penn
