"Auctioneer"
wasn't the first song to set bid-calling to music, but it was the most successful.
Leroy Van Dyke
, a real-life auctioneer, wrote and recorded the song as his first single for
Dot Records
, and in so doing scored a major crossover hit on the
pop
and
country
charts. The arrangement is deceptively simple, consisting only of
Van Dyke
on voice and acoustic guitar, and a session player on electric guitar. The flip side of the single,
"I Fell in Love with a Pony Tail,"
found
balancing between
and teen-oriented music, which foreshadowed his coming experiments with
rockabilly
.
The Auctioneer
is an anthology of
's complete
Dot
recordings from 1956-1958, including the aforementioned songs. The material varies in style and quality as
tried to sell
as another
Pat Boone
or
Sanford Clark
. There are
rock
remakes of
R&B
songs (
"I'm Movin' On,"
"Chicken Shack Boogie"
);
"Leather Jacket,"
a cover of
Elvis Presley
's
"Poor Boy"
), and attempts to reprise the
formula (
"Down at the South End of Town."
) Despite the inclusion of several previously unreleased songs and one alternate take, the collection has only 15 tracks, which is brief by
Bear Family
's standards.
's anthology of
Mercury
recordings,
Walk on By
, offers nearly twice as many songs for the same price. On the other hand, the original hit recording of
is hard to find on CD, and
is one place where it can be found. ~ Greg Adams