Leroy Van Dyke Walk On By (CD)

'Walk On By' picks up Leroy van Dyke's story as he joined Mercury in 1961 and scored the biggest hit of his career with the international smash hit, 'Walk On By'. The most important Mercury recordings are here, including If A Woman Answers, Night People, Dim Dark Corner, Party Doll, Fireball Mail and the German language version of Walk On By.

Leroy Van Dyke is a completely professional entertainer; he can capture an audience's heart like few others in any style of entertainment. As such, he is also hard to categorize, and while his hit records have been bigger country hits than pop hits, they tend to cut across conventional lines, and several have been quite successful in the pop market. But the real truth about Leroy Van Dyke is that he is not primarily a recording artist.

The electricity that his live shows generate rarely comes across undiluted in recordings, especially in those made in the studio. As he admits, "I'm not a recording performer so much as I am a live performer. . . . I very seldom get turned on in the studio. I do get turned on in front of a live audience, and it's very difficult to capture that." Studio wizard Jerry Kennedy, who played on virtually all Van Dyke's Mercury studio sessions (and gained fame as producer of Jerry Lee Lewis and the Statler Brothers, among others), agrees that Van Dyke is principally a live entertainer: "Oh, definitely! I've heard people say that.

It's kind of like the Wayne Newton of the country field" Several contacts with Van Dyke in connection with television appearances ('Nashville Now'), were impressively marked by the professionalism he showed: paperwork was completed on time, songs were submitted on time, press kits were sent promptly, telephone calls were returned, and he was early for rehearsal. Country stardom was an unlikely goal for the middle child of Frank B. Van Dyke and Mary Irene Sims Van Dyke.

Born on the family farm near Spring Fork, Missouri, on October 4, 1929, Leroy Frank Van Dyke could as easily have followed either of his father's two professions, farming (his father farmed 3,000 acres) or trucking (his father operated a trucking company that transported furniture, livestock and freight in the area "from, as I recall, New Mexico to New England, and from up north to down south." Whatever young Leroy might turn out to be, hard work was something to which he was accustomed from an early age, "scooping endless bushels of corn, baling thousands of bales of hay, or playing mid-wife to a flock of sheep," as an early press release states.

With sister Mary Frances, four years older, and brother William Elbert, two years older, Leroy was active in helping around the farm from childhood, as were his younger siblings, Elmer Harold, five years younger, and the baby of the family, Elinor Cora, eight years younger. Education was obviously valued by his parents, who had been unable to afford college for themselves, for all five of their children attended college, with most of them receiving degrees beyond the undergraduate level.

It is an eloquent statement of the values inculcated by their parents that each child subsequently repaid the expenses of that higher education. Growing up, Leroy loved to sing, and did so at every opportunity: "I was always interested in singing, from the time I was a little kid, on up through high school and college; I sang in the mixed chorus in high school, in the University of Missouri Men's Glee Club, also in the church choir for three and a half years while I was in college." While the type of music of that singing was not yet entirely focused, it "leaned a little toward country.

Some of my earliest influences were memories of my Dad going downstairs and turning on the old battery-operated radio — we didn't have electricity — and listening to Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and the Sons of the Pioneers, and then, as I grew a little older and got into high school and college, then I listened to the Grand Ole Opry. My favorites then, of the Grand Ole Opry stars, became people like Hank Snow and Red Foley. Those were my earliest influences. Basically, Hiked all kinds of music. In my high school years, I liked pop music, but I also liked big band music and country music. I liked all good music."

An early press release quotes him, "I cut my teeth on the steering wheel of a truck and a scoop shovel. However, one day my father and I were hauling a load of corn, and he asked me what I planned to do for a living when I grew up to manhood...