20 Things You Didn't Know About O Brother, Where Art Thou?
15. Everyone Assumed George Clooney Would Be A Good Singer (Even Himself), But He Needed Dubbing
As the nephew of Mambo Italiano and This Ole House singer Rosemary Clooney, music is in George Clooney's blood. So he seemed perfectly placed to play the performer of a runaway hit record. The only thing was that the charismatic screen idol surprised even himself by discovering that he really wasn't much of a singer at all.
"I went into a recording studio, and T-Bone Burnett and Joel and Ethan assumed that because I was Rosemary's nephew that I would be a great singer. And I kind of assumed that too," Clooney revealed in a 2014 interview, "We got into the recording studio and I sang Man Of Constant Sorrow... Then they played it back and it was pretty bad. It was so bad that I made them destroy it."
In the end, the vocal on the song was performed instead by Dan Tyminski of Union Station, the group best known as the backing band for country-bluegrass singer-songwriter Alison Krauss, who also features on O Brother's soundtrack.
Tyminski can be spotted on screen as the mandolin player backing up Clooney lipsynching to his vocals in The Soggy Bottom Boys' live performance late in the movie. He would go on to receive a Grammy for Best Country Collaboration for the song's single release.
More recently Tyminski had a number 1 hit across much of Europe as the lead vocalist on Swedish DJ Avicii's 2013 single Hey Brother, which also peaked at number 2 in the UK and at 16 on the US Billboard Hot 100.