One of the most celebrated American actors of his time, Harry Dean Stanton spent decades playing small character roles before he became an unlikely star in the 1980s, with his craggy, understated naturalism informing roles in cult favorites like Repo Man, Paris, Texas, and Wild at Heart as well as blockbusters such as Alien, Pretty in Pink, and The Green Mile. While best known as an actor, Stanton was also a musician and vocalist, and his life in music was as idiosyncratic as his history in acting. Disinterested in generic labels, his musical interests had more to do with what spoke to his heart than what category the songs fell into, and he could sing folk, blues, country, rock & roll, and gospel with an equal measure of conviction and understated passion. Stanton was not prolific as a recording artist, but the soundtrack to a documentary about his life and work, 2014's Partly Fiction, features a number of home-recorded vocal performances from the actor, while live and studio recordings of him with his band the Cheap Dates can be heard on the collection October 1993.

Harry Dean Stanton was born on July 14, 1926 in West Irvine, Kentucky. Music was an important presence in the Stanton household as he was growing up; his mother was a talented guitarist, and young Harry Dean sang in a barbershop quartet with his brothers. As the youngster gained confidence as a singer, he also learned to play guitar, harmonica, and drums. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, and after returning home, he attended the University of Kentucky, where he studied journalism and radio and landed one of his first significant roles in a student production of Pygmalion. Stanton went through a period where he felt his creative loyalties were being challenged as he debated if he should focus on music or theater. He would later tell a reporter, "I had to decide if I wanted to be a singer or an actor. I was always singing. I thought if I could be an actor, I could do all of it."

Stanton dropped out of school and headed west, setting down in California and learning the craft of acting at the Pasadena Playhouse. He also spent some time traveling the country with a vocal group, serving both as a singer and as their bus driver. After returning to California, he started to seriously pursue acting, and made his screen debut in 1954 in an episode of the television series Inner Sanctum. By the mid-'60s, Stanton was working regularly in television, and made one of his first memorable film appearances in 1967's Cool Hand Luke, where his character Tramp often carried a guitar and in one scene sang a memorable rendition of "Just a Closer Walk with Thee." He had a small but showy role in the 1971 cult favorite Two-Lane Blacktop, and he struck up a friendship with Bob Dylan while they were both working on Sam Peckinpah's 1973 film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. After the movie wrapped, Dylan invited Stanton to sing on one of his recording sessions, but tapes of the one track they cut together were lost. (Stanton would also appear in Dylan's directorial effort Renaldo Clara.) Stanton got another chance to show off his vocal stylings in the 1978 drama Straight Time, singing "Hand Me Down My Walking Cane" at a backyard cookout.

1979's Alien gave Stanton a significant role in a major box-office hit, and he managed another the same year in the Bette Midler vehicle The Rose. While he was well-established as a respected character actor, 1984 gave him two leading roles in films that became critical favorites -- Alex Cox's punk-informed satire Repo Man and Wim Wenders' atmospheric drama Paris, Texas. Stanton appeared on the soundtrack album for the latter movie, singing the Mexican standard "Canción Mixteca" as well as delivering a powerful monologue on "I Knew These People." Ry Cooder, who wrote the score for Paris, Texas, tapped him to appear on his 1987 album Get Rhythm, with Stanton lending vocals to the song "Across the Borderline," which Cooder wrote for the movie The Border, starring one of Stanton's close friends, Jack Nicholson. In 1988, he appeared in Martin Scorsese's controversial film The Last Temptation of Christ; Michael Been, leader of the alternative rock group the Call, also played a role in the movie, and Been persuaded Stanton to help with the making of the Call's 1989 album Let the Day Begin, with the actor playing harmonica on "For Love" and co-writing "Watch." The Boston roots rock act the Raindogs also brought Stanton on board for their 1990 album Border Drive-In Theatre, delivering a recitation on the track "Some Fun."

By the early '90s, Stanton was performing regularly in California, appearing at clubs during his downtime from acting gigs. He recorded a cover of Billy Swan's "Make Yourself a Home in My Heart" (with Swan on piano) for the soundtrack of the 1992 film Roadside Prophets, and he tackled another number from Swan's songbook, "I Hope I Never Get Too Old (To Rock & Roll)" on the roots rock compilation A Town South of Bakersfield, Vol. 3, which was released the same year. Stanton was doing shows with a backing band called the Cheap Dates -- Jamie James of the Kingbees on guitar, Jeff Skunk Baxter of the Doobie Brothers on pedal steel, Tony Sales of Tin Machine on bass, and Slim Jim Phantom of the Stray Cats on drums -- and they accompanied Stanton on a 1993 single on Rx Remedy Records, featuring his interpretations of "You Don't Miss Your Water" and "Across the Borderline." Those two tracks, along with several other studio cuts and recordings from a live performance, later appeared on a 2021 collection from Omnivore Recordings, October 1993.

Stanton recorded a brief, spare version of "Amazing Grace" that appeared on the 2002 anthology Getting Through It, a collection of songs for people struggling with grief. One of his most unusual releases was 2007's The Riddle, a collaboration with British electronic producers the Sugarman, with Stanton providing narration for the energetic dance track. For Record Store Day 2014, Omnivore Recordings issued a seven-inch picture disc with Stanton performing the George Jones hit "Tennessee Whiskey" in a casual home recording. The single proved to be a preview of the soundtrack album to the 2014 documentary Partly Fiction, in which Stanton sang a number of his favorite songs as he discussed his personal and professional lives. The actor played himself in the music video for the song "Christmas in L.A." by the Killers, and in one of his final performances, he played and sang the Western classic "Red River Valley" in an episode of the 2017 season of Twin Peaks. Harry Dean Stanton died in Los Angeles in September 2017; he was 91 years old. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi