Hollywood’s most celebrated and decorated living legend, Clint Eastwood, broke out in the 1960s, offering a worthy alternative to John Wayne as one of America’s biggest western stars. Having established a rough outlaw image in the formative TV series Rawhide and transforming it into a global phenomenon throughout Sergio Leone’s legendary Dollars Trilogy, Eastwood consolidated his lofty position by portraying the iconic anti-hero cop Harry Callahan in the five Dirty Harry movies.
Over his six decades basking in the Hollywood limelight, Eastwood branched out increasingly into production and direction, earning four Academy Awards and four Golden Globes for his duties behind the camera. Eastwood is still active at age 92, and released his most recent film, Cry Macho to rapturous applause.
In 2008, Eastwood appeared as a guest on the iTunes ‘Celebrity Playlist Podcast’ to play and discuss some of his favourite music. As a nonagenarian, it comes as no surprise that his list was predominantly comprised of jazz-pop.
“One of my favourite singers growing up was Johnny Hartman; I used his song, ‘I See Your Face Before Me’, in Bridges of Madison County some years ago,” Eastwood said, introducing his first track. “I think he also had a great album with John Coltrane, [John Coltrane &] Johnny Hartman, in which he does standards which are some of the best interpretations of standards you can hear.”
“One of my favourite albums was Joe Williams, A Man Ain’t Supposed to Cry, [in] which he also does standards, and he has such great songs as, ‘If I Should Lose You’ and ‘What’s New’,” 2 he added. “Some of these have been interpreted by pop singers of today, but most of them come from a long time back.”
Moving on, Eastwood revealed his passion for orchestral compositions. “My favourite big orchestra instrumental was the Woody Herman orchestra doing ‘Lemon Drop’, and also Woody Herman for instrumental ballad was ‘Early Autumn’, which featured Stan Getz and made Stan gets a big star, and he also did other wonderful interpretations of The Four Brothers and instrumentals of the ’40s.”
“Favourite female singers,” Eastwood pondered later in the episode. “Dinah Washington for ‘What Difference a Day Makes’. This was very popular years ago and is still a wonderful record. She was a fabulous interpreter of songs.
“After that, just about anything by Ella Fitzgerald. One of the greatest pop singers ever starting out with ‘A-Tisket, A-Tasket’, which was her first hit when she was a teenager and then she went on to be one of the greatest singers ever.”
Having played Fitzgerald’s ‘A-Tisket, A-Tasket’, Eastwood revealed who he regards as the finest singers of his generation. “Just about anything by Nat King Cole was wonderful. I feel lucky to have been raised in a generation that had King Cole and Frank Sinatra as our two most popular singers of that era. His unforgettable ‘Mona Lisa’. He could make anything – even ‘Nature Boy’ – any type of song he could interpret and make it great.”
Eastwood then discussed his love of novelty and comedy jazz artists, heaping most of his praise on Louis Jordan and picking out ‘Run Joe’ as his absolute favourite of the genre. “These records will still hold up today not only because they had great humour and great interpretation of humour, but they also are great instrumentally,” he said. “Louis Jordan was a great alto sax player; his band swung. It still swings today.”
Bringing us closer to the modern day, Eastwood played some of his favourite tracks from artists with whom he’s worked on movie soundtracks. Jamie Cullum and the South African band Overtone provided soundtracks for his movies Gran Torino and Invictus, respectively.
Elsewhere, Eastwood also revealed that he’s a huge fan of the contemporary jazz artist Diana Krall. “Diana Krall, who’s popular today, her interpretation of Midnight Sun, and ‘Why Should I Care?’ I happen to know the writer of that one [written by Linda Thompson and Clint Eastwood],” Eastwood revealed. “But anyway, ‘Midnight Sun’ – Johnny Mercer, one of the great, probably the greatest song lyricists ever, even to this day.”
See the full list of Clint Eastwood’s favourite songs below.
Clint Eastwood’s favourite songs of all time:
- Johnny Hartman – ‘I See Your Face Before Me’
- Joe Williams – ‘If I Should Lose You’
- Joe Williams – ‘What’s New’
- Woody Herman & His Orchestra – ‘Lemon Drop’
- Woody Herman & His Orchestra – ‘Early Autumn’
- Dinah Washington – ‘What Difference a Day Makes’
- Ella Fitzgerald – ‘A-Tisket, A-Tasket’
- Irene Kral – ‘Better Than Anything’
- Irene Kral – ‘This Is Always’
- Irene Kral – ‘It’s a Wonderful World’
- Jimmy Durante – ‘September Song’
- Nat King Cole – ‘Mona Lisa’
- Nat King Cole – ‘Nature Boy’
- Frank Sinatra – ‘Summer Wind’
- Frank Sinatra – ‘Come Fly With Me’
- Billy Ward and his Dominoes – ‘Sixty Minute Man’
- Louis Jordan – ‘Nobody Here But Us Chickens’
- Louis Jordan – ‘Saturday Night Fish Fry’
- Louis Jordan – ‘Run Joe’
- Louis Jordan – ‘Five Guys Named Moe’
- Duke Ellington – ‘The the “A” Train’
- Louis Armstrong & Duke Ellington – ‘I’m Just a Lucky So and So’
- Erroll Garner – ‘Misty’
- Diana Krall – ‘Midnight Sun’
- Diana Krall – ‘Why Should I Care?’
- Peggy Lee – ‘Why Don’t You Do Right’
- Peggy Lee – ‘Fever’
- Peggy Lee – ‘Is That All There Is?’
- Jamie Cullum – ‘Grace Is Gone’ (written by Clint Eastwood)
- Jamie Cullum – ‘Gran Torino’ (Gran Torino soundtrack)
- Overtone and Yollandi Nortjie – ‘9000 Days’ (Invictus soundtrack)
