Clint Eastwood names his favourite jazz artists
Clint Eastwood’s thousand-yard stare will always bring to mind the staccato guitars and resonant whistles of Ennio Morricone’s spaghetti western scores. Of course, like so many of his generation, Eastwood’s musical passions are firmly rooted in the world of jazz. Here, the A Fistful of Dollars, Where Eagles Dare and Escape From Alcatraz actor names some of his favourite artists.
Clint Eastwood rose to fame at a time when the boundaries between genres were becoming increasingly porous, allowing composers like Morricone to blend elements of popular guitar music with lush orchestral arrangments, giving birth to iconic themes like ‘Ecstasy of Gold’ and ‘The Good The Bad & The Ugly’. Even formerly puritanical jazz musician Miles Davis ended up playing with the rules of the genre in albums like Bitches Brew.
Eastwood is a little more traditional, however. During a conversation with The Telegraph about his work on The Jersey Boys, which traces the career of Motown vocal trio The Four Tops, Eastwood confessed: “I was too much of a jazz freak to have been into their music. The rock era was not my favourite”. Detailing further, the actor continued: “I wasn’t a big fan of the music that came out of the ’60s but I think the Four Seasons did some great stuff. ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’ was probably the closest thing to a classic song that came out of the ’50s and ’60s.”
The Academy Award-winner went on to note that he was always more of a fan of the era’s “great signers,” classic jazz vocalists. “I was brought up during the ’40s and ’50s music-wise, when you had the great singers. The men were Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Billy Eckstine and the women were Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn and Peggy Lee. You were just used to great singers.”
Eastwood was also a huge fan of Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker, about whom he made the biopic Bird, starring Forest Whittaker as the famed jazz saxophonist. “The first time I heard Charlie Parker,” he told The LA Times. “I was overwhelmed. Living in the Bay Area, I had been following the big resurgence of traditional jazz—Lu Watters, Bob Scobey, Kid Ory and all that—but hearing Bird, even though I couldn’t understand him at first, really turned me around.”
Jazz was by no means a private passion; it was part of his DNA. “My mother was a great Fats Waller fan,” he said, explaining how he got into playing jazz music as a youngster “By the time I was 15 or so I had learned enough to play at the Omar Club on Broadway in Oakland, where the laws were real loose and they’d let me play for free meals. At school the only instrument available was a fluegelhorn, which wasn’t considered so hip in those days, but I did play horn a bit; however, mostly I concentrated on ragtime and blues piano.”
Eastwood would go on to describe how his love of Charlie Parker got him into his “first reed idol”, Lester Young, as well as Coleman Hawkins, Flip Phillips, Howard McGhee, and Hank Jones. “Later on, I was exposed to people like Dave Brubeck, and then, while I was in the Army at Ft. Ord, I’d go to hear Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker.”
Clearly, Jazz has been a constant companion to Clint. And what a companion it is. You can check out one of our favourite Bird cuts below.
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