Earl Van Dyke (July 8, 1930 – September 18, 1992) was an American soul musician, most notable as the main keyboardist for Motown Records' in-house Funk Brothers band during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The band can be heard on 22 number one pop hits, 48 number one R&B hits, generating sales of over 300 million records.
Van Dyke was born in Detroit. With support from his parents (his father was a classical violinist turned Ford Motors factory worker), Van Dyke started playing piano when he was five years old. He took lessons at the Detroit Conservatory of Music. He began playing professionally as a teenager hanging out with the likes of Barry Harris, Yusef Lateef, Tommy Flanagan, Roland Hanna, Kenny Burrell, and Hank Jones, getting a gig here and there.
In between factory work, sporadic playing jobs, and two stints in the Armed Services, Van Dyke caught tuberculosis and spent two and a half years in a veterans administration hospital. In 1956, jazz guitarist Emmett Sleigh hired Van Dyke to play in his band, Emmett Sleigh and the Sleighriders. Van Dyke was hired to replace departing organist Jimmy Smith in Chris Columbo's band.
While touring with Lloyd Price, Van Dyke met fellow Detroiter James Jamerson in Rockville, NY, in 1959. The phenomenal bassist was backing another Detroiter, singer Jackie Wilson. Jamerson had been recording for an upstart label called Motown Records headed by a young songwriter/producer named Berry Gordy. Gordy had written or co-written all of Wilson's hits to that point. Jamerson enthusiastically encouraged Van Dyke to move back to Detroit and become part of something that was going to be big. Van Dyke didn't decide to join Motown until 1962.He also saw that he wasn't the only piano player on the block. There was Motown's first pianist Joe Hunter and pianist Johnny Griffith.
When Hunter left Motown in 1963, Stevenson named Van Dyke the bandleader for the Funk Brothers. Once the march of the Motown hits began, Van Dyke and the rest of the band were on call 24 hours a day, every day of the week. All-day recording sessions became common with a few scant hours left to maintain family and personal relationships, relax, or keep their chops up by playing jazz at the Twenty Grand Club, Phelp's Lounge, and their favourite after-hours haunt, the Chit Chat Club.
Sometimes their set would be interrupted by a Motown producer arriving and saying that they needed the band for a impromptu recording session and they'd reluctantly go to the recording studio to lay tracks in the pre-dawn hours. The band became so tight that the label would have them record rhythm tracks and would later add vocals to them after a song had been written to fit the tracks. In some instances, a band member would have a part that he created replaced and recreated by a vocal line or riff.
Besides his work as the session keyboardist on Motown hits such as "Bernadette" by The Four Tops, "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" by Marvin Gaye and "Runaway Child, Running Wild" by The Temptations, Van Dyke performed with a small band as an opening act for several Motown artists, and released instrumental singles and albums himself. Several of Van Dyke's recordings feature him playing keys over the original instrumental tracks for Motown hits; others are complete covers of Motown songs. His 1967 hit "6 by 6" is a much-loved stomper on the Northern soul music scene. He was nicknamed "Big Funk", and "Chunk o Funk".
Though the musicians were paid well for their services, they were still well below union scale. This being a commonly known fact in the Detroit music community, several music entrepreneurs, local and otherwise, took advantage of the situation and offered the band more money, leading to the Funk Brothers being heard on a lot of backdoor sessions. The band can be heard on records issued by the numerous labels that sprang up in lieu of Motown's phenomenal success.
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| Earl with Kim Weston & Maxine Powell |
During 1970, Van Dyke began to accompany mainstream lounge acts when they would appear in the Detroit area and began working with Freda Payne as her musical director. Van Dyke joined the in-house band at the Hyatt Regency in Dearborn, MI, backing singers Sammy Davis, Jr., Vic Damone, Mel Tormé, and others when they came thorough town. Motown would still send tracks back to Detroit for the few remaining Funk Brothers to add overdubs for several years after their departure.
In the mid-'80s, Van Dyke got a job with the Detroit Board of Education at Osborne High School. He still gigged locally and did advertising jingle recording sessions, the occasional record dates, local festivals and his own ensembles. 1991 was the year that marked the end of Van Dyke's playing days as he succumbed to the debilitating carpal tunnel syndrome. The following year in September of 1992, at the age of 62, Van Dyke died of prostate cancer at Harper Hospital in Detroit.
(Edited from Bio by Ed Hogan @ AllMusic)