Chad Stuart, of singing duo Chad & Jeremy, dies at 79
Chad Stuart, half of the popular singing duo Chad & Jeremy, which had seven Top 40 hits during pop music’s “British Invasion” of the mid1960s with gentle, wistful love songs, died Dec. 20 at his home in Hailey, Idaho. He was 79.
He had pneumonia following an accidental fall, said his daughter, Beth Stuart.
Stuart was studying at a London drama school in 1960 when he met a fellow student, Jeremy Clyde. Stuart, whose given name was David Stuart Chadwick, was more interested in music than acting, and he and Clyde began to perform together in clubs and coffeehouses.
“At the time we were a couple of starving artists,” Stuart told the Intelligencer Journal of Lancaster, Pa., in 2007. “We were two characters in search of an identity.”
Clyde took time off to work as a stage actor, as Stuart — the glasses-wearing member of the duo — became known as Chad Stuart, legally changing his name. They briefly formed a rock band called the Jerks but soon reverted to a quiet, folk-rock style of music reminiscent of the close vocal harmonies of the Everly Brothers or Simon & Garfunkel.
Like Peter and Gordon, another British duo of the time, Chad & Jeremy played acoustic guitars and offered a mellow alternative to the electrified rock-and-roll of the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Kinks and other groups in the British Invasion. They even mixed in Tin Pan Alley tunes, such as “September in the Rain” and “The Way You Look Tonight.”
Chad & Jeremy recorded their first album, “Yesterday’s Gone,” in 1963. It failed to catch on in their homeland, but it produced several hits in the United States, including the title track, written primarily by Stuart.
Another tune from the album, “A Summer Song,” was featured on a British TV show, “Juke Box Jury,” in which a panel had 30 seconds to decide whether it would be a hit. It was unanimously rejected, Clyde recalled in a telephone interview.
But when “A Summer Song” was released in the United States in 1964, it rose to No. 7 on the Billboard pop chart. It has had a long shelf life and was featured in the 1998 Wes Anderson film “Rushmore” and in a 2019 Coors Light commercial. Another song from the duo’s debut album, Ann Ronell’s 1932 standard “Willow Weep for Me,” also became a Top 15 hit.
In the United States, Chad & Jeremy developed a huge following among young fans, especially teenage girls. They sang their songs on countless TV programs, from Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand” to “Hullabaloo” and “Shindig,” and appeared on several sitcoms playing thinly disguised versions of themselves, including “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” “The Patty Duke Show” and “Batman,.
“It all caught us off guard,” Stuart said of the sudden fame in a 2011 interview with California’s Ventura County Star. “We ended up with a hit record. That shouldn’t happen to anyone, really. It’s a bit like going to Malibu and renting a surfboard and you get lucky, catch a wave and everyone goes, ‘Wow, check it out!’ And you didn’t have the faintest idea how it happened — only that it wouldn’t happen again.”
Signed by Columbia Records, Chad & Jeremy had a Top 20 hit in 1965, “Before and After,” but their later efforts didn’t match their early success.
David Stuart Chadwick was born Dec. 10, 1941, in Windermere, England. His father was in the lumber business, his mother was a nurse.
As a child, he was a member of the choristers at Durham Cathedral in England. By the time he enrolled at what is now the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, he was a skilled singer, guitarist and pianist, with a thorough grounding in music theory.
When Clyde heard that there was a new student who could play and sing all of the popular songs of the day, “I said, ‘ Take me to this musical genius.’ He could pick up any instrument, and within five minutes he could make a tune out of it.”
When their record deal collapsed in 1968, Clyde returned to England and became an actor at London’s Old Vic theater and in many stage and TV productions. Stuart stayed in the United States and tried unsuccessfully to continue his musical career with his wife at the time, appearing as Chad & Jill. He worked as music director of “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” on CBS-TV and as a producer at A&M Records.
Chad & Jeremy reunited from 1983 to 1987 before an amicable parting. They were embroiled for decades in legal battles over the publishing rights to their early music and, in Stuart’s words, received “nothing, not a cent.”
Stuart settled in Idaho, where he gave private music lessons.
In 2003, he and Clyde came out of retirement and continued touring, throughout North America, for 13 years.