Looking back at Clint Eastwood’s forgotten duet with Ray Charles
When your career has spanned across seven decades, it is no surprise that off the main road of your chosen profession are side streets, gullies and alleyways littered with glittering forgotten projects. For Clint Eastwood, an actor and director who has been entwined with Hollywood since 1955, has enjoyed several of these gem-like moments, including his oft-neglected duet with jazz icon Ray Charles.
Eastwood is a known lover of jazz. Having spent much of his heyday in the glow of Hollywood’s rock and roll antics, one might expect him to have been beguiled by the bright lights of the genre as his contemporaries, Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda, Harrison Ford, all were. However, Eastwood has always noted his preference for jazz and its icons.
In a 1995 interview with Rolling Stone, the actor opened up about his love of jazz and why he never truly fell into the rock scene: “I’ve loved a lot of rhythm & blues and some rock & roll. When you go back and listen to the music of the ’60s, some of it is quite good. But I must say I never got drawn into the rock & roll generation. I just kind of missed it, growing up in the ’40s. For me, it was big band and bebop. In the ’60s I sort of skipped by rock. It didn’t musically inspire me a lot. But I love rhythm & blues, which is sort of the inspiration for rock & roll. To me, rock & roll seemed like sort of a white version of rhythm & blues.”
Having previously compiled a list of his favourite songs and singers for a 2008 iTunes ‘Celebrity Playlist’ that contained exclusively jazz performers, there was one notable name left off the list: Ray Charles. While it might feel like a minor oversight, few would expect Eastwood to leave off the song he duetted with Charles, the 1980 release ‘Beers To You’.
It might seem strange to have Dirty Harry singing alongside one of the greatest performers of the 20th century, but Eastwood’s music career is a lot more prevalent than you may think. He has released four albums over his career, from 1961’s Rawhide’s Clint Eastwood Sings Cowboy Favorites to the 2014 release with Frankie Laine, The Singing Cowboys. However, his duets with both country legend Merle Haggard and jazz supremo Ray Charles in 1980 gained him his only chart positions.
‘Bar Room Buddies’ was released in 1980 as part of the Bronco Billy soundtrack and saw Eastwood in a familiarly western situation alongside Haggard. Gaining the top spot on the country charts, it would be a noted victory for the actor and director. Yet it is his collaboration with Charles that is far more striking, with Eastwood bringing the legendary jazz performer’s smoky vocals to a typically honky tonk tune.
Released as part of the soundtrack for Eastwood’s action comedy caper from 1980 Any Which Way You Can, the song clearly holds a special place in the actor’s heart as he made sure to visit Charles when directing his 2003 documentary Piano Blues, the seventh instalment of Martin Scorsese-produced series The Blues. In the clip below, Eastwood sits down with Charles as the magic pianist begins delivering his unique blues. It both delights and mesmerises Eastwood as he watches his former partner and jazz legend do his thing.
“I’ve always felt that jazz and blues were true American art forms,” says Eastwood in the documentary. “Maybe the only really original art forms that we have.”
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