Making our day – 40 years on

Making our day – 40 years on

It’s hard to imagine it’s been over 40 years now since the huge publicity boom surrounding Clint’s return as Dirty Harry. The film of course was Sudden Impact, the first Dirty Harry film since The Enforcer in 1976. 

The promotion and publicity campaign for Sudden Impact was enormous. It seemed that you couldn’t open a magazine or a newspaper without some story or a tie-in feature. But one of the most unusual things to emerge from this campaign was the "Make My Day" novelty record recorded by American country music artist T. G. Sheppard and featuring Clint. It was released in February 1984 as the second single from Sheppard's 1983 album Slow Burn, although it was not included on the album until a 1984 re-release. The song reached #12 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks charts and was written by Dewayne Blackwell. The song describes the activities of Eastwood's film character Harry Callahan, with a variation of Callahan's trademark line "Go ahead, punk. Make my day" as the chorus. 

It was a bit of fun and the release had the desired effect, but the trademark quote would come to haunt Clint. The seemingly endless requests to repeat the line by any or every chat show hosts  began to grow tiresome and was noticeably beginning to grind on Clint. 

T.G. Sheppard later told The Hot Seat about the day movie icon Clint Eastwood called him on the phone then flew him to California to record the duet "Make My Day" together.

"I'm waiting in the lobby very nervous because I'm a huge Clint Eastwood fan like everyone. And I kept expecting this big entourage to roll up and him get out with security and I look out the front window and I see this old Chevrolet pick-up truck the one that was used in the movie 'Bridges of Madison County' roll up and I see somebody get out from behind the wheel and it was Clint, by himself and walked right in the door and said, 'I'm Clint Eastwood' and I said (laughing) 'I know' and he said, 'Ready to do a little singing?' and that was the start of a great friendship."  

It's noticeable from the photo taken with Sheppard in the studio that Clint turned up that day wearing a T-shirt with an early logo design for Tightrope (1984) a film which was in production at the time and released in August of 1984. 

The 7” single (Warner Bros. Records – 7-29343, Curb Records – 7-29343) can today be picked up fairly easily and inexpensively, usually through most auction outlets such as Ebay. 

Below: The original sheet music

             

Below: A rare advertisement for the single release