For better or worse, Clint Eastwood has regularly indulged his love of music during an illustrious career that has broadened his horizons well beyond simply being a legend of cinema and a four-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker.
It wasn’t until 2003 that he scored his first movie, though. Still, Mystic River would open a doorway that would see him compose the orchestral accompaniments to Million Dollar Baby, Flags of Our Fathers, Grace Is Gone, Changeling, Hereafter, and J. Edgar. However, he’s never scored another film since the boom period that saw him do it seven times in eight years.
Eastwood has been credited as a singer or lyricist on nine of his movies, too, and even released the album Rawhide’s Clint Eastwood Sings Cowboy Favourites in 1959, duetted with Ray Charles on ‘Beers to You’, and scored a number one hit on the ‘Hot Country Singles’ charts with ‘Bar Room Buddies’ in 1980, which featured in Western dramedy Bronco Billy.
With the greatest of respect, he’s never been a good or even passable crooner, but that’s never prevented him from repeatedly trying over a number of decades. On the plus side, his deep-seated love of music has at least allowed him to recognise greatness when he hears it, signified by his glowing appraisal of one all-timer in particular.
When questioned on his favourite female singers, Eastwood was quick to name “just about anything by Ella Fitzgerald”. Referring to her as “one of the greatest pop singers ever starting out with ‘A-Tisket, A-Tasket, which was her first hit when she was a teenager,” he then celebrated how “she went on to be one of the greatest singers ever” in general.
The 14-time Grammy winner was a presence like no other, but when Eastwood was originally developing A Star Is Born before Bradley Cooper ended up replacing him as director, he believed the person he’d chosen as the female lead in its pre-Lady Gaga stages was in line to secure a similar status.
“She could become a new Sarah Vaughan or the next Ella Fitzgerald,” he said of Beyoncé. “She has the same class. I don’t know if she knows their music, but I intend to do a good education for the movie.” Of course, Eastwood didn’t end up wielding the megaphone on A Star Is Born and Beyoncé didn’t star, but he was confident enough when she was attached that she was on the same level as his favourites.
The many musical bones of his body may not extend as far as his vocal chords, but as well as being an accomplished composer, Eastwood knows a thing or two about the greatest singers in history despite the clear and obvious fact he was never going to become one of them regardless of how hard he tried.