The Daily Herald
No Doritos for Tom Waits
Thursday, November 3, 1988
Tom Waits doesn’t like Frito Lay selling Doritos by using a singer who sounds just like him. Waits filed a $2 million-plus suit in Los Angeles claiming commercials for the new Salsa Rio Doritos have “painstakingly, deliberately’ imitated his gravel-road singing voice.
Waits, who has appeared in the movies ‘Ironweed’ and “Down By Law‘ when not singing, wants $2 million in punitive damages, plus unspecified actual damages and whatever profits Frito-Lay derived from the ads.
There is a precedent in the case – Bette Midler won her claim against Ford Motor Co and a New York ad agency for using a sound-alike to sing her hit “Do You Want to Dance” in a 1985 commercial.
