In the early 1960's, Clint Eastwood found himself riding high on the waves of success his television series Rawhide had brought to him. However, he was also beginning to grow tired of portraying the simpleton character of Rowdy Yates (a character he played for 7 years) and was looking for a way, anyway, to expand his range to the public, possibly establish himself with a more upscale audience than his current show had attracted.

During this period in time, it was fashionable to take an up-and-coming television star, and if they could carry a tune, make a pop single or two to test their teen appeal. To Clint it was a chance to try something different. So he decided to take a crack at it and in 1961 cut a single. It was called "Unknown Girl."

The record made little impact. "Unknown Girl" was strictly bubblegum, a plaint about an idealized girl for whom the singer yearns-not at all Clint's kind of music. It wasn't that he was bad; it was just that it was not very good or, perhaps one should say, not very singular. The disc sounds like a hundred, a thousand, virtually unheeded long-since-forgotten pop records of that day. Needless to say, it caught on and Clint cut two more singles in the next three years ("Rowdy" and "For You, For Me, For Evermore") and a full-scale long playing record called Rawhide's Clint Eastwood Sings Cowboy Favorites.

Several years later Clint further demonstrated his singing abilities in the 1969 film musical Paint Your Wagon. He carried several tunes in the film including "Elisa," "I Talk to the Trees," "Gold Fever" and "Best Things" (a duet with costar Lee Marvin). Most of his songs, however, were mostly staged and sometimes simply played over the other action, almost as if they were a kind of narration. Though the film was not a huge success, it further demonstrated Clint's singing talents.

Though he never appeared in another musical, he did get another opportunity to test out his vocal chords on the single for the soundtrack to the 1970 film Kelly's Heroes, where he had a minor hit with "Burning Bridges" and the flip side, "When I Loved Her."

Twelve years later, audiences saw Clint return to onscreeen swooning in the critically acclaimed film Honkytonk Man. He also released a single in 1981 called "Cowboy in a Three Piece Suit."

In the 1980's, he made several guest appearances singing duets on several of his own movie soundtracks around this time as well, including Bronco Billy singing "Barroom Buddies" with Merle Haggard, and on Any Which Way You Can singing "Beers to You" with Ray Charles. Clint has even shown up on a few country recordings including T.G. Sheppard's "Make My Day" and Randy Travis' "Smokin' the Hive."

As of late, Clint Eastwood has expanded his musical horizons by composing music for many of his own movies. Themes from Unforgiven, A Perfect World, The Bridges of Madison County and Absolute Power were all written by Eastwood. Though in recent years, he has spent more time writing music than singing it, his latest vocal endevor was on the soundtrack to Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. His love for Jazz is prominent on this soundtrack with Clint, himself, taking lead vocals on Johnny Mercer's "Accentuate the Positive."