Rawhide's Clint Eastwood Sings Cowboy Favorites [Amber LP] in Bloomington, MN

With the rusty door-hinge of a voice he possesses today, it's hard to imagine a time when
Clint Eastwood
could have been groomed as a singing star, but in the early '60s, when he came to fame as the rebellious Rowdy in the hit Western TV series Rawhide, it wasn't such a crazy idea. In 1963, playing off the popularity of the show,
Cameo-Parkway
released an album featuring
Eastwood'
s versions of classic cowboy-style tunes. While
Eastwood
is admittedly not an exceptional vocalist, he's not at all bad; this is by no means some
Golden Throats
-style celebrity train wreck. At the time, there were plenty of equally photogenic young men with no greater vocal ability than
being promoted as country singers, many with less of an actual musical background than the jazz-schooled actor.
's soft, somewhat laconic croon might not possess the commanding quality that was de rigueur for the era's country stars, but he never strays off-key, and his style is a kind of cross between legendary cowboy singer
Roy Rogers
and
Dean Martin
. Most of the tunes he tackles here were already well-known in hit versions by other artists --
the Sons of the Pioneers'
"Tumbling Tumbleweeds,"
Bob Wills'
"San Antonio Rose,"
Gene Autry'
s
"Mexicali Rose,"
etc. The loping rhythms, lonesome harmonica, lazy guitar licks, and male backing-vocal choruses are all in keeping with the production conventions of the day for cowboy artists. A couple of non-LP singles sweeten the pot, including the written-to-order
"Rowdy,"
intended as a sort of theme song for
's Rawhide character. While
Cowboy Favorites
didn't make
a C&W star, it wasn't his country music swan song -- years later he would record with
Merle Haggard
and sing in the films Paint Your Wagon and Honky Tonk Man. ~ J. Allen