Ernie Chavez Makes Music in the Ring and Out : For Garden Grove Welterweight, Knocking Out Tunes Is a Sweet Science, Too

In or out of the boxing ring, Ernie Chavez has got the beat.

In the ring, he’ll beat you to a pulp.

Out of it, his music is good enough to beat the band.

Here we have Garden Grove’s Ernie Chavez, budding welterweight boxer and one-man band. This is one musician you definitely do not want to tease about wearing an earring.

Chavez, fresh from a surprise appearance at the Goodwill Games in Moscow recently, appears ready to emerge as a force in each of his main interests--boxing and music.

First, meet Ernie Chavez, amateur musician.

At Marlow’s Music Store in Garden Grove where he hangs out, Chavez recently gave a brief concert while seated among the pianos and guitars.

Chavez said he grew up listening to the oldies that his mother and father enjoyed, but since high school his tastes have favored the Beatles, Bob Dylan, James Taylor, the Eagles and, especially, Neil Young, the Canadian folk-rocker whose career has spanned everything from Woodstock to Farm Aid.

Once comfortable, Chavez, with a harmonica strapped around his neck a la Dylan, strums his guitar and easily croons a song of Young’s called “Old Man”:

Old man, look at my life--24 and there’s so much more,

Live alone in a paradise that makes me think of two.

Love lost, such a cost, give me things that don’t get lost,

Like a coin that won’t get tossed,

Rolling home to you . . . . “

Old man, do look at the 24-year-old Chavez’s life, because for as much as he’s accomplished, there’s the promise of so much more that he’ll do.

“You know, if I got some professional advice and some time in a studio, I’ll bet I could make some music that people would enjoy,” Chavez said between songs.

“The people here (at the music store) have been great as far as helping me in both my careers--they’re kind of my sponsors. They gave me a four-track recorder to make this (demo) tape with--I play lead guitar, bass guitar, vocals and harmonica. It’s a sophisticated little machine.”

Chavez puts the tape on the store’s cassette stereo and out comes his now-familiar voice, sounding something like Ritchie Valens, the late-1950s balladeer.

You wonder why he hasn’t pursued it further until he explains that music is still a personal relaxation for him. So for now he’d rather just strum away at the Huntington Beach Pier than at a formal venue.

Chavez taps his feet, plucks the guitar and picks up with another favorite Neil Young song of his:

“I want to live, I want to give,

I’ve been a miner for a heart of gold.

It’s these expressions I never give,

That keep me searching for a heart of gold--

And I’m gettin’ old . . . . “

It seems that a heart is not the only golden object that Chavez covets. He’d like an Olympic medal made of gold, too.

Now meet Ernie Chavez, amateur boxer.

By his own admission, Chavez drifted between jobs after high school and couldn’t find a purpose in life until boxing reclaimed him in 1984. From age 7 to 12, Chavez boxed alongside Richie Sandoval and had a 108-7 record before walking away from it.

“I don’t regret that because it gave me a chance to pursue other interests,” Chavez said. “Like in high school (Westminster) I went out for the wrestling team and was a four-year letterman.”

“If I would’ve spent my whole life boxing, I’d probably have turned pro by now and be at the end of my career. This way I got to experience more things in life, whether it was other sports, my music, traveling or what have you.”

At the invitation of his childhood coach, Dick McCarthy, Chavez resumed his training after being bitten by the boxing bug during the 1984 Olympics, and since then he has a record of 26-7, including a state title in Golden Gloves competition last year.

Said McCarthy: “I expect he’ll win the national championship in the next national tournament and he should make either the U.S. Pan Am team (1987) or the Olympic team.”

According to McCarthy, Chavez’s two greatest assets as a boxer are that he is a southpaw and that old standby--he works harder than the rest.

“He’s a joy to coach--in my 22 years in boxing I’ve rarely seen anyone like him,” McCarthy said. “Usually, you tell a kid to run and he won’t do it unless you’re right on top of him. With Ernie, you tell him once and it’s done.”

Such determination helped Chavez develop into a boxer good enough to represent the country in the recent Goodwill Games in the Soviet Union. When the Pentagon barred some military boxers from the games, Chavez was asked to substitute and he was more than up to the task.

In his first 147-pound match, a box-off to reach the starting 12, Chavez defeated three-time Irish national champion William Walsh, 4-1. In his next match, in what was the first round for the rest of the field, Chavez lost to Bogomil Aleksandrov of Bulgaria, 5-0.

As a reward for his respectable showing, Chavez’s family picked him up at Los Angeles International Airport in a rented limousine and Chavez in turn regaled them with tales of Red Square and the other sights he took in.

But this isn’t the end of the story. This is only the beginning.

For somebody who is recovering from a hit-and-run accident that broke a bone in his leg during a tournament last March in Beaumont, Tex., the future looks bright indeed.

A beer commercial that Chavez filmed while training in Colorado Springs begins running on television this week, one that Chavez and four teammates beat out dozens of other boxers for.

After interviewing the affable Chavez, it’s easy to see why.

On how he operated the four-track recorder to make his music demo tape: “I just read the instructions and went to town.”

On food in the Soviet Union: “That was the first time I ever ate crunchy peas.”

On what his weakness is as a boxer: “You know, we always seem to find something new to work on.”

Chavez was slated to fight as the Western representative to the Olympic Festival under way in Houston, but the Goodwill Games tour precluded that.

For now, then, you might find Chavez polishing up his boxing at the Westminster Boxing Club and his singing at the music store or the pier.

So which would Chavez rather have, a Grammy award or an Olympic gold medal?

“Oh, the gold medal, for sure,” Chavez said, “because I can always work on my singing for the rest of my life, but boxing is something I can only do at a younger age.”

Perhaps, as Chavez’s reputation as both a boxer and a musician grows, some referee with a sense of humor will count out the next opponent that Chavez knocks out with, “An-a one, an-a two. . . .”