From Nellis Air Force Base to the Vegas Strip, Ernest Chambers leads a double life

Karen Zekan

Monday, May 24, 1999 | 9:45 a.m.

Master Sgt. Ernest Chambers is clearly not your typical military man.

His priorities are indeed in place: He's devoted to his country, a patriot to the core, and has 17 years of duty in the States and overseas to back up his hard-earned stripes.

Yet it's the life he leads away from Nellis Air Force Base, sans the camies and black boots, that keeps turning heads.

Chambers has literally become a Las Vegas singing sensation.

His deep, versatile voice (he can sing a full spectrum, from first tenor -- and a little falsetto -- to bass and can tease a rich Barry White impersonation) landed him a background vocalist spot for David Cassidy and a solo spot with Tommy Tune in MGM Grand's $40 million "EFX" production. Chambers spent a year and a half as a Star Fleet Officer at the Las Vegas Hilton's "Star Trek: The Experience," and in coming months he'll transform yet again, becoming "Star Wars' " Darth Vader in a special engagement at the Bellagio.

"It's really been a rush," Chambers, 34, says of his new-found alter ego. "I never would've believed I'd be performing on the Strip."

Or anywhere else, for that matter.

Because basketball was the only thing on his mind as a boy.

The game was going to be his ticket out of his small, rural hometown in Louisiana, where the bayou ran through his front yard and opportunities to experience life beyond were few.

There was always music.

His father would play blues on the guitar for the family and on stage with Chambers' uncle as lead singer in a band they formed years ago. The Chambers brothers were known for their Zydeco -- that exotic Creole-Haitian sound. Clifton Chenier was a major influence in those days with his zydeco boogie and Cajun waltzes, along with B.B. King, Joe Simon and anyone with that Muddy Waters sound.

"Where I'm from, folks who were into music were esteemed in the community," Chambers, who grew up the oldest of seven boys, said. "It was very rural, and that meant one opportunity to get out -- music or sports. They never tried to keep you away from it. If they saw that you had a certain proclivity or talent for music, it was encouraged."

But Chambers couldn't care less.

The nuns in his Catholic school could hear his voice, and would make him lead the choir. He took his singing for granted, and the ribbing from his schoolmates to heart.

He dreaded leading the choir. And he was the one who wound up doing all the solos in school productions, and Christmas carols.

To this day he'll never forget the words to "Rhinestone Cowboy," or the day as a 10-year-old lead singer of a band, he and three friends took to the stage. "Brick House" was the song that well could have brought down the house, but the proverbial cat got Chambers' tongue.

"There were all the musicians behind me and I was up front," Chambers said. "I remember those kids looking at me, and they laughed! The music started thrice. The third time I had to give up the ghost -- I started to laugh myself. It was very self-effacing. And to this day, I will not perform unless somewhere on my body the words -- at least the start -- are written down."

He was in basketball and track in high school, turning his nose up at the chance for music scholarships, opting instead to play basketball at Alvin Junior College and Louisiana College. But money was short and the military seemed the only way out.

So he enlisted at 17, starting out as an airman in security police.

He took up boxing his first years in the service and wound up the United Kingdom Sports Conference Champion in 1984 while based in Bent Waters, England.

The next five years, Chambers found his way back to gospel music and, when not on duty, traveled all over the South with the prison ministry of the Assembly of God Church.

He earned a black belt in tae kwondo during a year-long assignment in Korea when he got an inkling to give singing another chance. His buddies were stunned by his voice and urged him to try, so he entered the Air Force's "Tops in Blue" talent competition and wound up taking home a slew of awards between 1993 and 1994, including best male vocalist and best show performer.

It was during those years that the roots of "the Vegas connection" took hold, when Chambers became friends with a fellow talent show competitor and former Air Force security policeman named Ken Young.

"He's one of the few singers I respect, and I have over 20 years' vocal experience," said Young, since retired from the military and current spokesman for the Clark County School District Police. "He can do everything from classical sound to street-edge funk, rock, pop, gospel. He's got an incredible voice, strict values and incredible motivation."

Young sought out Chambers years later when a spot opened in a local band known as "One Spirit" that made its debut playing the Country Star's breakfast brunch. And it was here that the Las Vegas story began.

Unbeknownst to the band, the MGM was starting its search for a more soulful sound to launch David Cassidy in "EFX," contrasting then-departing star Michael Crawford's theatrical, operatic style. "One Spirit" had the sound they wanted.

Looking back, the timing couldn't have been better, Chambers said.

"It gave me opportunities I never could've dreamed of -- to learn opera and theatrical singing," he said. "I guess I was intuitively talented to do that -- or at least I mocked the guys! I ended up understudying the Master Spirit, and that really gave me the (acting) bug. I only got to do it once because the guy would never take a day off, but I got to come out of the ceiling (and) they put me in this awesome costume."

Fun as it was, though, home life was suffering.

He was up at 6 a.m. every day, at the base til 5 p.m., at MGM from 6 p.m. until past midnight, then home to sleep and start it all over again the next day.

So, hoping to meld his two worlds, he and wife, Vellanee, auditioned together for parts in the Hilton's "Star Trek" show.

"It was grueling," Vellanee Chambers remembered. "There were more than 300 people at the audition at Cashman Field and they put 10 of us together at a time and made us improvise.

The couple made the cut. Ernie was cast as a Star Fleet Officer; Vellanee, the first female Klingon.

"It's been a wild ride, but I never would've known I had it in me if my husband hadn't pushed me to try," said Vellanee, who leads as much of a double life as her spouse, teaching first graders by day at Ruthe Deskin Elementary.

Each moved on from "Star Trek" for bigger challenges: In October, Ernie Chambers will finish his masters degree in public administration. He's thinking next of a law degree, forming a band and maybe even getting into TV. He's worked on seven recording projects with other musicians.

Vellanee Chambers will soon appear as Gymnasia, a courtesan, in the Spring Mountain Ranch Summer Theater's production of "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum."

Her husband likely will live out his basketball dreams vicariously through his daughter, Sierra, 12. "She's already 5'9"," the proud dad says, "and they say she's one of the best players around."

Friends call him "The Professor," because Chambers is the only guy they know who loves to read the dictionary. They also tease him by mimicking the "Hey, Mon" vignette from the Wayans Brothers' "In Living Color" show about the Jamaicans who work 17 jobs. The couple laugh it off.

"It keeps you young," Vellanee Chambers said. "Stay active, and life won't pass you by."

His bosses at the base have supported Chambers.

"You don't want to give the perception that the Air Force is your part-time job, because it's not," Ernest Chambers said. "We give our lives to this career. I love this country and everything it stands for, and I sing the National Anthem every chance I get as a contribution outside my daily job."

And who couldn't love a country where a career military man could have a life as full as he could make it? Not to mention the chance at moonlighting in a role made famous by James Earl Jones, the one actor Chambers idolized since childhood.

"The force is with you, young Luke," Chambers thunders in Vader-speak. "Welcome to the Dark Side."

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