Walter Chancellor Jr. Inducted into Iowa Rock & Roll Hall of Fame After 62 Years of Music
Walter Chancellor Jr Iowa Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction honors 62 years of dedication to the saxophone, from Des Moines beginnings to a music career spanning Minneapolis stages and national accolades.
Walter Chancellor Jr. always kept music close
Walter Chancellor Jr. will be inducted into the Iowa Rock & Roll Hall of Fame under the Matouesk Lifetime Achievement Award after 62 years of dedication to the saxophone. “I just always kept music close to me. How can you get rid of something that’s been so close to you all your life?” he said.
Chancellor was born in Evanston, Illinois, and raised in Des Moines, Iowa. His mother moved him and his siblings to Iowa after his father died in 1959. The couple passed through Des Moines during trips from Chicago to Nebraska and thought it was the perfect place to raise children.
In elementary school, Chancellor was introduced to the saxophone, his lifelong passion, by an older kid he looked up to named Bobby. Bobby’s performance of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” prompted Chancellor to ask for his own saxophone for Christmas.
His mom got him a plastic saxophone that year, after telling him, “Your dad played trombone and your grandmother has his trombone. You should think about taking up that instrument.”
Even hearing this, Chancellor said he knew he wanted to play the saxophone. “You think about somebody that fell in love with something at eight years old. And, you know, I mean, thoroughly. I mean, I was, I was just obsessed with playing the horn,” he said.
When he was 15, Chancellor and his grandma went into the garage to grab his late father’s trombone when he saw an instrument case too small for what his mother said was played. His grandmother opened the case, and sitting there was a saxophone.
“That was a crazy revelation,” Chancellor said. “I think my dad probably was telling me in my ear, ‘Don’t let your mama tell you to play no trombone, boy.’”
Chancellor’s first real saxophone was $60, which his mother got for him under the condition that he took lessons. Time passed and Chancellor stuck with it; he earned first place in his first school recital, joined a band in his early teens, had to leave the band after being caught smoking a cigarette and drinking a gin sour, then joined a supervised band before eventually enlisting in the Marine Corps.
Two weeks after getting out of the Marine Corps, Chancellor was invited back into the band and went on tour in Daytona Beach, Florida. With him he brought $20, some clothes, and a cassette player.
About a year and a half later, the band came to a “disheartening” close, disbanding after getting close to signing a record deal. Chancellor returned to Des Moines and worked at a manufacturing company calibrating field nozzles for jets for nine years, all the while playing his saxophone.
“I had to be at work at five in the morning and I would get off at three, and we were playing every weekend for two years from Tuesday through Saturday.” Then he decided to quit his job and move to Minneapolis with $60 in his pocket.
There he met Kirk Johnson, dancer and percussionist for Prince, while playing at a club in St. Paul. From there, they wrote songs, and Chancellor always had a band.
“I just worked jobs and I always looked at my jobs as like a second job, not so much as my primary, even though I was doing music probably three to four hours a day with it,” Chancellor said.
Now, 70 years old with accolades including a double-platinum record, Chancellor said he always wanted to go back to Des Moines with a band. “It never happened in the 38 years I was here, but I feel very honored that they would recognize me from the work that I’ve done up here and as an extension of where I started from there.”
After years living in Minnesota, a friend of Chancellor’s, Jack Robinson, called him to teach at the Institute of Production and Recording. He worked there for 18 years, retiring three years ago.
Chancellor said it has been great seeing where his students end up and bumping into them across the country. He kept a vision to enrich young minds and pass on a legacy.
“I’m just still writing music even at 70,” Chancellor said. “Coming up with some good stuff. I just refuse to regress in any kind of way with my talent, and I just try to keep and stay young in spirit and emotion as it relates to the music and what I’m doing these days.”
The Iowa Rock & Roll Music Association’s Class of 2026 will be inducted Labor Day weekend at Arnolds Park Amusement Park.
For more information, visit www.iowarocknroll.com.
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