into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011. Biography Childhood and adolescence: 1949–1971 Thomas Alan Waits was born on December 7, 1949, in Whittier, California. He has one older sister and one younger sister. His father, Jesse Frank Waits, was a Texas native of Scots-Irish descent, while his mother, Alma Fern (née Johnson), hailed from Oregon and had Norwegian ancestry. Alma, a regular church-goer, managed the household. Jesse taught Spanish at a local school and was an alcoholic; Waits later related that his father was "a tough one, always an outsider". The family lived at 318 North Pickering Avenue in Whittier, California. He described having a "very middle-class" upbringing and "a pretty normal childhood". He attended Jordan Elementary School, where he was bullied. There, he learned to play the bugle and guitar. His father taught him to play the ukulele. During the summers, he visited maternal relatives in Gridley and Marysville. He later recalled that it was an uncle's raspy, gravelly voice that inspired the manner in which he later sang. In 1959, his parents separated and his father moved away from the family home, which was a traumatic experience for 10-year-old Waits. Alma took her children and relocated to Chula Vista, a middle-class suburb of San Diego. Jesse visited the family there, taking his children on trips to Tijuana. In nearby Southeast San Diego, Waits attended O'Farrell Community School, where he fronted a school band, the Systems, later describing the group as "white kids trying to get that Motown sound". He developed a love of R&B and soul singers like Ray Charles, James Brown, and Wilson Pickett, as well as country music and Roy Orbison. Bob Dylan later became a strong influence, with Waits placing transcriptions of Dylan's lyrics on his bedroom walls. He was an avid watcher of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and The Twilight Zone. By the time he was studying at Hilltop High School, he later related, he was "kind of an amateur juvenile delinquent", interested in "malicious mischief" and breaking the law. He later described himself as a "rebel against the rebels", for he eschewed the hippie subculture which was growing in popularity and was instead inspired by the 1950s Beat generation, having a love of Beat writers like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs. In 1968, at age 18, he dropped out of high school. Waits worked at Napoleone's pizza