Ray Stevens: Leroy Van Dyke CabaRay Nashville Performance...

Oh here I am with my second blog entry in a row! We've now ventured into October 11th here...and in this blog entry I'll be embedding an interview and performance from Leroy Van Dyke on the Ray Stevens CabaRay Nashville television series. If you're very familiar with country music...classic country music...and you recall hearing a particular song filled with a lot of auctioneer calling then you were hearing a phenomenal recording called "The Auctioneer" by Leroy Van Dyke. This talent made him memorable and, as a result, in addition to his recording career he would entertain audiences with his auction chants whenever he appeared on country music television shows of the era. One of the television shows that Leroy was a regular on happened to be the Ozark Jubilee and he hosted his own self-titled television series in 1965. The auctioneer talent ran in the family and his cousin, Ray Sims, is a member of the National Auctioneers Association Hall of Fame. He and his cousin starred in a 1967 movie titled What Am I Bid?. 

Now, even though I've opened up the blog entry writing about "The Auctioneer", the song Leroy performs on Ray's television show is "Walk on By". This particular recording, as Leroy mentions, wasn't all that great when he first heard the demo recording. The record producer happened to be Shelby Singleton...and so Ray and Leroy speak of their mutual friendship with the late record producer. "Walk on By" was released in 1961 on Mercury Records. As you can tell, if you know your Ray Stevens history, both Ray and Leroy were labelmates in the early '60s as Ray was also a Mercury Records artist at the time. "The Auctioneer" happened to be a big hit but "Walk on By" out performed "The Auctioneer". "Walk on By" was another cross-over pop hit...but in country music the single hit number one and stayed there for 19 weeks!! Those two records remain his biggest hits but being the showman that he is and with his phenomenal auctioneer vocal acrobatics he's entertained hundreds of thousands of people for many decades. 

One of the various highlights of his entertainment career was his lengthy run as a co-host of the radio and television series, Country Crossroads. Bill Mack began the series and Leroy Van Dyke was the co-host and eventually they were joined by Jerry Clower, in 1973. Leroy eventually retired from the series after 10 years but Bill and Jerry continued recording episodes of the series for another 20+ years. According to several websites the series began in October 1969...and so that means Leroy's 10 year run with the series wrapped up in 1979 or perhaps sometime prior to October in 1980. This series isn't discussed in this video clip but I thought I'd make mention of it nevertheless.