‘Clint Eastwood Sings Cowboy Favourites’: A look at Rawhide’s musical beginning
Though actors aren’t often excited about being typecast, when you become familiar with one actor in a specific role, it’s hard to shift that image from your mind. Clint Eastwood is a great example of this; he has starred in and directed many excellent movies, but when you think of Eastwood, you think of a rootin’ tootin’ gunslinger.
The success of his performance in Sergio Leone’s western trilogy as the man with no name made it impossible for people to think of him outside of that western remit. He has since become the epitome of the spaghetti western, as the way he moved, spoke, and fought people had the rugged coolness that we associate with that period. He is ruthless, but he is also completely unphased by it, and it’s compelling cinema.
Quentin Tarantino once said that Sergio Leone’s trilogy is the only trilogy that works wholeheartedly, given that every movie exposes you to something completely different and amps up the pressure and tension. “I think there’s only one trilogy that completely and utterly works to the Nth degree, and that’s A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” the director said.
“It does what no other trilogy has ever been quite able to do,” continued Tarantino, “The first movie is terrific, but the second movie is so great and takes the whole idea to such a bigger canvas that it obliterates the first one. And then the third one does the same thing as the second one, and that’s kind of what never happens. You’ll see this big jump from the first to the second and they don’t really land the third one.”
Given the trilogy’s success, it’s surprising to hear that Eastwood was close to turning the role down. While he had yet to step into the shoes of the cowboy that would make him a household name, he was pretty happy with his current role as Rowdy Yates in Rawhide. He earned a good living on the series and had enough time between shooting to play golf. The only reason he even read Leone’s script was because his agent insisted.
It’s easy to see why Eastwood might have been settled in his role on Rawhide, too. He was already a big name in America, as many people watched the series. If you ever need proof of how big the series was, you needn’t look any further than the fact that it was enough to land Clint Eastwood a record deal. It wasn’t unusual for TV stars to land record deals playing pop songs, but Eastwood’s album was slightly different, as he was in character when singing it, performing classic country songs that felt in place on Rawhide.
In 1963, the album Rawhide’s Clint Eastwood Sings Cowboy Favourites was released to the joy of fans up and down the country. Eastwood was further cemented as a legend to them, as he performed a range of cowboy classics, including ‘San Antonio Rose’, ‘Don’t Fence Me In’ and ‘Bouquet Of Roses’. The record is still available to buy and is worth listening to for any country’s fans, as his voice has a sweet and gravelly quality, which is actually quite compelling.
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