Tom Waits Sues Frito-Lay, Says His Voice Appropriated

Singer Tom Waits testified Thursday that he was shocked, embarrassed, and “angry--very angry,” the first time he heard a corn chip radio jingle that imitated his voice.

“Somebody had studied me a little too close,” Waits said on the third day of what is expected to be a two-week trial in Los Angeles. “It was the equivalent of all the scars, dimples, the lines all being in the same place. . . . It was a little spooky.”

Attorneys for Waits are trying to persuade U.S. District Court jurors of a novel claim: that his voice was illegally impersonated when Frito-Lay Inc. of Plano, Tex., used a sound-alike artist in an ad campaign for a new corn chip, the Salsa Rio Dorito. Waits has asked for at least $4 million from Frito-Lay and its ad agency, Tracey-Locke Inc. of Dallas, because they allegedly damaged his reputation and conducted a false advertising campaign by airing the commercial, which sounds very similar to Waits’ “Step Right Up.”

Earlier in the trial, Steve Carter, the Texan who sang in the commercial, testified that while doing the commercial, he deliberately tried to copy Waits’ voice.