After several years of requests from fans, The Kody Norris Show has finally released a recording of The Auctioneer, a classic country song from 1956 that is always a big number for Kody when they perform it live. When we spoke with him earlier this week, we learned that this audience favorite actually parallels his own life in many ways.
Written by Leroy Van Dyke and Buddy Black while stationed in Korea in the ’50s, the song tells of a young boy who had become fascinated by the way an auctioneer could command a room with his half spoken-half sung call. So much so that he determined to learn to do it himself, to the dismay of his family who saw it as a low profession. But like all such stories, the little boy wins in the end and becomes a successful auctioneer.
Kody had exactly this experience as a child, and the music video captures that nicely alongside a performance of the song by the band.
I wondered how The Auctioneer first impressed itself on his mind.
“I want to say that I have a vague memory of Leroy Van Dyke singing this song, but the one that sticks out the most from my teenage years was when I was playing with Vince Combs & the Shade Tree Grass from Xenia, OH. Tommy Lamb did a great version with Vince that was pretty music like Leroy’s, and that really stuck with me. Tommy was also an announcer at Bean Blossom.”
But even before he started playing professionally, Kody found the auction call to be a thrilling and exciting cadence.
“When I was a kid, my mom was a bookkeeper for an auctioneer here in Mountain City. I tried to learn do it, just by myself, and I always loved that sound.
One day years later at a festival, somebody dared me to sing The Auctioneer on stage, and people flooded the record table.
There are days now when I get 30-40 requests before a show to sing that song.”
When it came time to start work on their next album, Kody and Mark Freeman of Rebel Records discussed including The Auctioneer, and eventually decided to do it, releasing it as single a month ago.
“I’ve always been hesitant to record this song, but people just love it. We always play it when we’re on the Opry.
People still like to be entertained, even in this digitized world we’re in. They might not even know it until they see it.”
Knowing how strong the reaction would be, they also shot a music video during the summer at the band’s Backyard Breakdown party, held at Kody and his wife, Mary Rachel’s, home in Mountain City, TN.
“We shot the video at our home, on a rainy day, but everybody held right in there and did a great job. The interior shots are in our living room. It was a seven hour shoot during our Backyard Breakdown, sort of a VIP party for our fans, with people from 23 states who play the people at an auction.
Our nephew, Kendall Nalley, Mary Rachel’s brother’s son seen in the video, is meant to be me as little kid. The one scene of him around the back of the barn, man, that was me to a T when I was a little boy. I would set me up a little auction platform and sell whatever was in the barn to my pretend audience.
A lot of the items shown during the auction scenes are from my own personal collection.”
But the story gets even more personal. Kody really had talked about attending auction school all his life, and during the end of the COVID shutdowns, his wife arranged for him to do just that.
“Mary Rachel gave me a gift to go to the Kentucky Auction Academy in Bowling Green, and I learned so much about it all that I had never even thought about. This was right around the time that my dad passed, so it also helped raise me up from that as well.”
So without any further ado… here’s The Auctioneer!
The Auctioneer by The Kody Norris Show is available now from popular download and streaming services online, and to radio programmers via AirPlay Direct. It will also be included on the band’s next Rebel Records project.
We can’t leave this story without mentioning Kody’s thoughts about the recent flooding where he lives in east Tennessee following Hurricane Helene last month.
“We live in an 1860s plantation home. I love where I live, love my community.
A lot of spots in our county got terrible water damage. Me and Mary Rachel feel a bit guilty because our place was spared, but a lot of our neighbors got five feet of rock and sand in their homes. What do you say to a guy who has lost everything thing in the world in just five minutes standing in your driveway?
If everybody will do just a little bit, we’ll all be alright.”
That’s the spirit. And we are all doing what we can.
