I’m sitting with Gene Chandler in Ed Debevic’s, where they’re playing “My Girl” by the Temptations and someone near us has ordered a Blue Moon Burger. “I played with them last week,” Chandler says, “the Marcells. They do ‘Blue Moon.’”
Chandler was born Eugene Dixon on the south side of Chicago in 1940. His dad was a steelworker and his mom worked at Dominick’s. He was an only child. He went to Englewood High School, where he and a few friends formed a neighborhood singing group called the Gay Tones and performed at high school talent shows. Once, after winning one of those shows, they performed at the old Trianon Ballroom at 63rd and Cottage Grove, and a local radio station broadcast the show live.
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Before serving in the Airborne Rangers, Dixon linked up with a group called the Dukays, who played local cabarets and nightclubs. He sang lead. “We weren’t making no more than $15 apiece,” says Chandler. “But sometimes we’d do two or three shows a night, and back then that was a lot of money.”
NAT records, the company that was handling the Dukays, turned down “The Duke of Earl.” But Vee-Jay records was interested. The only problem was that Eugene Dixon was signed to NAT as lead singer of the Dukays. So Vee-Jay signed Dixon as a solo act under an assumed name. He took the last name of his favorite actor, Jeff Chandler. The record company would have preferred that he just take the name “Duke of Earl,” and they credited his first album simply to “the Duke.” Chandler’s name is only mentioned once, in the liner notes under “special thanks.”
“These days it’s not too extravagant,” says Dark. “I check into the hotel, check the room, make sure it’s how he wants it. Usually he likes a king-size bed, white wine, and two TVs. He loves TV. But he’s not an extravagant person. He doesn’t mind flying coach. With us, it’s not your typical star-chauffeur situation. We’re like brothers.”
“Thank you,” he says.
