Actors recording albums has been commonplace for decades, but John Wayne wasn’t exactly the kind of movie star anyone would associate with a stint in the recording booth, never mind a Grammy-nominated album.
And yet, that’s exactly what happened when ‘The Duke’ made his one and only detour into the music industry, even if viewers were spared from hearing him belt out a showstopping number or two. Wayne may have made a few films as a singing cowboy early in his career, but his voice was dubbed over because he couldn’t carry a tune to save his life.
When anyone thinks of the face of the classic western, poetry isn’t the first thing that comes to mind, either. ‘The Duke’ was the epitome of rugged masculinity and flag-waving Americana, an enemy to communist sympathisers everywhere, and a superstar so protective of his image and persona that he very rarely deviated from the archetype that made him a household name in the first place.
However, it turns out he was a bit of a softie after being reduced to tears by a reading that inspired him to make his solitary venture into the recording arts. John Mitchum, an actor and the younger brother of ‘Golden Age’ icon Robert Mitchum, penned a series of patriotic poems that clearly punched Wayne squarely in the feels.
The idea originated from Forrest Tucker, who co-starred with Wayne and Mitchum in 1970’s Chisum. He heard the latter reading a poem titled ‘Why Are You Marching, Son?’ and was so enraptured that he encouraged Mitchum to read it for ‘The Duke’. When he did, the decidedly macho actor was left in floods of tears.
“I’ve never recorded anything in my life, but I’m going to record an album of your poetry,” Mitchum’s daughter Cindy remembered Wayne telling her father, per The Des Moines Register. Always a man of his word, the grizzled legend did exactly as promised, with America, Why I Love Her releasing in March 1973.
An instant hit upon its release, Wayne’s debut album shifted more than 100,000 copies within its first two weeks of release, spent 16 weeks on the Billboard charts and earned a Grammy nomination for ‘Best Spoken Word Album’ to land the star the most unlikely awards season recognition of his career.
As cliched as it might sound to single Wayne out as bleeding red, white, and blue, his estate leaned into that reputation by releasing America, Why I Love Her on CD for the first time in the aftermath of 9/11, with the star’s reputation for being as patriotic as they come leading to another spike in sales.
Sure, it wasn’t a vanity project like so many of the actors who’ve fancied themselves as the next great musical sensation, but it’s nonetheless an oft-overlooked part of Wayne’s legacy that he was a Grammy-nominated performer.