Clint Eastwood is a famed actor and director, but he is also an acclaimed composer and musician. Musically, the four time Oscar winner is best known for his film scores, but jazz was actually his first love. Before he ever touched a stage, the Oakland Tech graduate was masquerading as a grown up in Bay Area bars. “In the Bay Area,” he explained to the Wall Street Journal in February, “there was a resurgence of Dixieland jazz in the ’40s—there was the Frisco Jazz Band, and Lu Watters and the Yerba Buena Jazz Band. I used to go out to a place called Hambone Kelly’s in El Cerrito. And because I was fairly big for my age, I could go in there and get a beer and sit in the back and listen to these players.”

This early interest in jazz led him to later produce biopics on Charlie Parker, Thelonius Monk and Dave Brubek. He argues that jazz helped spearhead integration, but also admits that those were disgraceful years for America. “Growing up I was always rooting for the jazz musician,” he told WSJ. “I remember I was disturbed when there was a big objection to Nat King Cole moving into Hancock Park in Los Angeles. I didn’t know Hancock Park at that time, because I was just a kid in Oakland. But I always thought: ‘God, who wouldn’t want to have Nat Cole living next to him?'”

Mr. Eastwood was a huge fan of jazz, but he also taught himself to play piano and compose. He has integrated this passion into his films by composing the soundtracks for movies such as Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby, Mystic River, Hereafter and Changeling. Between Eastwood’s early interest in Jazz and his later work on soundtracks however, he was a somewhat disgruntled TV actor in a well-known long-running show called Raw Hide.

At the time, it was common to recruit TV stars to sing pop tunes in order to test their likeability with the teeny-bopper demographic. Clint, looking for opportunities outside of Raw Hide, decided to record the song “Unknown Girl” on one such compilation. It’s a fairly standard pop ballad typical of the era, but for those who only know the surly and squinty-eyed actor and director, this is a glimpse at a softer side of him. He would go on to record many other songs, including lots of cowboy classics, but we’ve chosen to share his first musical foray into the public eye.

Check out “Unknown Girl” for a nostalgic chuckle, but also explore some of his more recent soundtrack work. Perhaps some day he’ll collect a 5th Oscar for the effort. Not bad for an 81 year-old Oakland boy.

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