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Rodney Chandler, founder of Chandler’s
Music Company outside McKenzie, pauses in his
performance of memorable songs and Christmas carols,
played on his computerized Lowry organ, one of five
organs in his home. |
At 90 years old, Rodney Chandler is holding his own. He
plays the organ with aplomb, sports a classy new ride, and
has been married to his bride, Mable, for less than two
years. His early years--when he paid his dues first to his
parents, then to self, family, and society--were equally
ambitious: life in the fast lane, cruising on good, old
fashioned common sense, hard work, shrewd business skills,
and Southern charm. Through it all he built a lasting legacy
and the character to withstand hardship when his wife of 60
years took ill with Alzheimer's 15 years before her demise
in 2000.
"I'm just old Rod and that's all," he says humbly, rejecting
the notion of any special qualities.
It was 90 years ago, on November 12, when Rodney came into
the world, the first born of eight children destined to be
born to Ruth and Amon Chandler. Next came Covie and then
Alden, both now deceased, Rena Miller of Bruceton; Alice
Kirksey of Huntingdon; Wallace, who lives in Gary, Indiana;
Kenneth, now residing at Oak Manor in McKenzie; and Ivy
(Harris) Smith, who recently moved to McKenzie from
Maryville, Indiana.
The family lived in a big, old frame house on the old
Everett farm that lay about a mile and a half from his
current abode near Chandler Music Company, an enterprise
born 42 years ago from his uncommon talent in fine-tuning
pianos to precision.
He was an adult before he learned his craft, however. As a
child growing up during the Depression, the family was
preoccupied with earning a living. "We worked hard, I mean
hard," he says.
By Christmas time, cotton picking took place indoors at
night, in rooms filled with pulled plants and workers. In
addition to farming 20 acres of cotton, Rodney's father ran
a sorghum mill and a sawmill.
"We worked year round; I mean hard," he reiterates. "It was
slow going some of the time, but we had plenty to eat and a
lot of people were starving during the Depression."
By the time he was 20, Rodney was ready to leave home,
however, his father had other ideas.
"Daddy said I owed 'til I was 21 for my raising," Rodney
tells. The family acquired a piano just before he was old
enough to strike out on his own.
"They told me the other kids would learn the piano and I
wouldn't," he says with a knowing nod, but I fooled them.
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Rodney Chandler then and now: left, at
about 20 years old before heading to Cincinnati, Ohio
to seek his fortune; and after many years of
successful entrepreneurship and the creation of a
lasting legacy for his progeny. |
Previously, his mother had owned an old pump organ, but
at the time Rodney's interest was barely stoked.
"I learned a few chords but I didn't play enough to learn
it," he says. He had, however, attended singing schools
taught by the Ganus brothers in churches during the early
1930s.
In Cincinnati, Ohio, where Rodney moved "to seek his
fortune," he held various positions, working at Mutual
Manufacturing and Supply Company for about nine years
between 1936-45 during which time he decided to learn piano
tuning. He studied the craft from 1939 to 1943.
"I liked music to start with and I wanted to learn to tune
pianos," he says. In order to learn harmony, he also took
piano playing lessons for 75 cents per session in a studio
with 17 teachers, after turning down the $6 per hour classes
at the school where he was studying tuning.
"That was like $100 an hour now," he says incredulously.
He recalls his teacher advising students that, if they would
eat only vegetables, they would be able to tune better.
"One boy bought it and ate only vegetables," he says with a
grin. "I think if the Lord said it's good to eat, it's
good."
When Rodney excelled in the next round of testing, he
advised his classmate to go out and eat a big steak.
In the meantime, he and Jewell Robison were married in 1941.
She was a longtime friend he had met at a 4-H club outing in
Jackson around 1930 or '31. They had become very close after
corresponding nearly a dozen years through life's ups and
downs.
"She was a beauty operator," says Rodney. "I told her if she
could cook good bacon I'd try to bring it home and she
wouldn't have to work in a beauty shop."
The first of their three children, Gary, was born in Ohio.
He grew up to become a piano tuner as well and works from
Chandler Music Company.
"Gary's a buckeye," Rodney says with a happy grin. Gary and
wife Wanda are the parents of Michael, who has a master's
degree in music and teaches in Dallas, Texas.
Rodney and Jewell's daughter, Karen Allen and husband Jackie
also work at Chandler's Music Company. They have two
children, Joel and Jadra, who is the mother of Juliet.
Rodney and Jewell lost their youngest daughter, Gloria, in
an automobile accident when she was just 17 years old.
Relating the tale of the accident that occurred so close to
home, he recalls, as well, that she had played the piano
during graduation the previous two years and how, a busy
teenager, she had played exceptionally well with little
rehearsal.
Returning to his experiences in Cincinnati, he contrasts the
size of the city-- rated as the 12th largest city in the
United States, he says--and local rural communities.
"How many Kroger stores do you think there were in
Cincinnati?" he asks, noting most people guess five to ten.
"There were 1155!" he answers, wide-eyed, recollecting that
a sign on the store's door had related the trivia.
"I saw some real astounding things there," he shares,
recalling how the river froze over one winter and a man,
though warned, attempted to lead two big horses across the
ice after seeing another man cross safely leading two
smaller horses. Halfway to shore, the ice broke and the
horses crashed through the ice.
"People walking across the river saw the horses bumping up
against the ice," he says. "They didn't see the man. I
crossed on the suspension bridge; I didn't think it was
worth taking a chance."
The 1937 flood drove 10,000 residents from their homes, he
continues. He aided the rescue effort, going from house to
house to transport people from their homes to dry ground, in
a small boat supplied by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
One women steadfastly refused to leave without her floor
model radio.
"We were told to take just women and their pocketbooks," he
says.
Rodney checked on her several times throughout the day,
finding at one point that she had elevated the radio on
blocks of wood. Only when floodwaters rose higher than the
second-floor windowsills did she agree to leave without it.
Several days later, he says, gas and oil that had seeped
into the waters caught fire, burning the houses above the
water line, along with those who had refused to leave.
"As far as you could see, east and west, fires were
burning," he says. "It was the closest thing to Hell I've
ever seen."
He also saw some ridiculous things, he continues, including
draftees who attempted to commit suicide, rather than become
soldiers during World War II, by jumping from the 100 feet
high viaducts (long, high bridges) in the city. One who
survived the plunge was discovered sitting below the
structure, lighting a cigarette. Another didn't survive.
As for Rodney, whose draft number was four, he was so
certain that he would be drafted that he had already sold
all his furniture and was prepared to leave when he went for
his physical; however, he was found to have a heart murmur,
which precluded his enlistment. He nevertheless did his part
to aid the effort, performing a needed service by working in
a defense plant.
Rodney's sensibilities are confounded by the necessity of
war.
"I wish everybody could be friendly and loving instead of
fighting one another," he says with exasperation. "It would
be a taste of Heaven on Earth."
Rodney and Jewell returned to Tennessee in 1945, he says,
because "Jewell wanted to be close to her people (in Buena
Vista) and I wanted to be close to mine, too."
Rodney is full of musical knowledge and history, easily
relating details regarding the imperfection of the musical
scale and Bach's invention of "equal temperament" in which
all the notes in the scale are shifted by the same amount in
order to resolve the problem of "meantone temperament". It's
a complicated but quite interesting formula that students of
music would likely find all the more fascinating.
He worked at Jaco's Music in Jackson from 1957 till 1963,
when he went into business for himself, with a year's
overlap when he did both jobs.
"I resigned at Christmas in 1962 and didn't leave until
Christmas in 1963," he laughs.
Despite his lack of formal schooling, which ended after the
eighth grade, he excelled in his chosen profession and was
soon able to double the salary of his former employer, owing
to his expertise.
His business acumen translated into an increasingly
successful business that was assisted in part thanks to
McKenzie's-and thus Chandler Music Company's-location
between Nashville and Memphis.
He recalls selling truckloads of Vox amplifiers-the same
brand that was in use by The Beatles-and being asked by the
astonished representative of the company in California that
was supplying him with the goods, "Where is McKenzie?"
Going on to share a few trade secrets and best business
practices, Rodney notes, "I'm thankful to have made enough
to buy bread and butter, anyway."
An expert organ player, Rodney maintains thick notebooks
full of sheet music, one of traditional favorites and
another of Christmas tunes. Each page bears notations
regarding his preferred accompaniment from his computerized,
Lowry organ, his favorite of five organs distributed
throughout his home.
"I have an organ in almost every room of the house," he
says. He is also partial to a Yamaha model that was his
former favorite.
He has performed annually at fairs in Gleason, Dresden,
Huntingdon, and Camden as well as the Decatur County Fair,
and at horseshows in Jackson, Paris, Huntingdon and more.
He started playing at the Carroll County Fair in 1963, he
says. Other places followed shortly thereafter. He mentions
officials in Paris recently gave him a $100 raise, observing
the equipment he supplied was as good as any in New York or
Nashville.
"We appreciate that; we appreciate it a lot," Rodney says
sincerely.
He's also played in nursing homes in McKenzie and Dresden.
It was only after he was 75 years old that he had time to go
fishing, he says, and he still goes in to work two or three
days a week to do book work.
About a year and a half after Jewell's death in 2000, he
rekindled a friendship with Olivia Chandler, whom he had
known in the 1930s and who had since moved to Memphis.
Knowing it would be a short-lived relationship due to
Olivia's poor health, the couple nevertheless married.
"We had four months together," Rodney says.
His loneliness was assuaged when he met and married his
current wife, Mable, with whom he will have been married two
years on February 7 next year. The two met thanks to a
20-year friendship between Mable and Rodney's sister, Alice.
They enjoy going out from time to time and having friends
over. On Sunday mornings they attend Sunday School and
church at Fairview Baptist Church, where Rodney is a
longtime member. Some Sunday evenings they go to Mable's
church, Christ's Chapel in Atwood, for singings and other
special events.
"I've got a lot of friends there I'm always anxious to see,"
she says, mentioning as well a plethora of nieces and
nephews.
Mable's three sons are Jimmy Williams, Roger Dale Williams,
and Mike Williams. She has three grandchildren, Jason, Teri
and Jordan, and five great grandchildren.
"I wanted somebody to talk the blues away with me," he says,
grinning mischievously. "I told her, now don't make me like
you too much-and then look what happened."
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