Original Version By Gene Chandler
The song originated from warm-up exercises by the Dukays, a vocal group who included singers Gene Dixon and Earl Edwards and who had already had some success on the R&B chart. The group would regularly warm up by singing "Do do do do..." in different keys. On one occasion, Dixon changed the syllables he was singing to include Earl's name, and the chant gradually became the nonsense words "Du..du..du..Duke of Earl". The pair worked on the song with regular songwriter and mentor Bernice Williams, and then recorded it with the other members of the Dukays. However, the group's record company preferred to release another song, "Nite Owl", leaving Dixon with the offer of releasing it as a solo artist. Changing his name to Gene Chandler (a surname taken from that of the actor Jeff Chandler), the song was released at the end of 1961, quickly rising to become number 1 on both the pop and R&B charts. "Duke of Earl" debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on January 13, 1962, and held the number-one spot for three weeks. It was on the Hot 100 for a total of 15 weeks.
Read more about this topic: Duke Of Earl
Famous quotes containing the words original, version and/or chandler:
“He had been a lad of whom something was expected. Beyond this all had been chaos. That he would be successful in an original way, or that he would go to the dogs in an original way, seemed equally probable. The only absolute certainty about him was that he would not stand still in the circumstances amid which he was born.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
“Truth cannot be defined or tested by agreement with ‘the world’; for not only do truths differ for different worlds but the nature of agreement between a world apart from it is notoriously nebulous. Rather—speaking loosely and without trying to answer either Pilate’s question or Tarski’s—a version is to be taken to be true when it offends no unyielding beliefs and none of its own precepts.”
—Nelson Goodman (b. 1906)
“The law isn’t justice. It’s a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)