Van Dyke Parks

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Van Dyke Parks (born January 3, 1943) is an American singer, guitarist, arranger, and record producer who has worked on several film and television soundtracks.

He is best known for his 1967 album Song Cycle and for his lyrics on the Beach Boys' unfinished album Smile.

Parks has performed with artists such as Syd Straw, Ringo Starr, Little Feat, Happy End, Ry Cooder, and Joanna Newsom, in addition to recording or arranging albums by Randy Newman, Harry Nilsson, Phil Ochs, Little Feat, Happy End, Ry Cooder, and Joanna Newsom. Parks, a native of Lake Charles, Louisiana, spent his youth at the American Boychoir School in Princeton, New Jersey, studying clarinet, piano, and singing.

He began his professional career as a child actor.

He worked in film and television throughout the 1950s, and in the early 1960s, he majored in music at the Carnegie Institute of Technology.

After dropping out of college in 1963, he moved to Los Angeles, where he first paid work was arranging "The Bare Necessities" for the 1967 Disney film The Jungle Book.

He became involved with the burgeoning West Coast music scene, and went on to perform with — or appear on record by — acts such as the Mothers of Invention, the Byrds, Judy Collins, Paul Revere & the Raiders.

His LP Song Cycle (recorded on a budget exceeding $70,000) encompassed a variety of styles (including bluegrass, ragtime, and show tunes) and framed classical styles in the context of 1960s pop music.

It was initially released to underwhelming profits, but in later years, it became a cult. Parks continued his explorations into Afro-Caribbean music, particularly on his 1972 album Discover America and records he produced for the Esso Trinidad Steel Band and Mighty Sparrow.

He also worked at Warner Bros' audio/visual unit at the same time.

Records, which was the first of its kind, began to produce music videos for musicians.

Since then, he has worked in motion pictures and composed soundtracks for theatrical films and television shows such as Popeye (1980), Sesame Street Presents: Follow the Bird (1985), and The Brave Little Toaster (1987).

Much of his latest work has been involved in commissioned orchestral arrangements for less well-known indie bands.

Early life

Parks spent time in Lake Charles, Mississippi, during his childhood, as the youngest of four children in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. His older brothers played brass instruments. Richard Hill Parks, his father, was a psychiatrist who served as chief psychiatric officer in the Dachau liberation reprisals. Richard Menninger's specialties, including neurology and psychiatry, made him the first doctor to admit African-American patients to a white southern hospital. Dick Parks and His White Swan Serenaders were both a part-time clarinetist and had a dance band to get through medical school. Conservator Parks' mother was a Hebraic scholar.

There were two grand pianos in the family's living room, and at age 4, he began studying the clarinet. He attended the American Boychoir School in Princeton, New Jersey, studying voice and piano, and would perform "Gershwin, Schoenberg, atonal music, and everything else." Parks appeared in La bohème at the Metropolitan Opera and performed the title role in Amahl and the Night Visitors at the New York City Opera. Parks became a big fan of old-style American music, especially the sounds of Tin Pan Alley. This obsession with Depression-era songwriting correlated strongly with his artistic goals and aspirations in the 1960s and beyond. Spike Jones and Les Paul, musicians, also influenced him greatly, causing him to explore pop music as a form of experimental music. Parks has reported that the first record he ever bought may have been "Memories Are Made of This," by Dean Martin.

He began his work as a child actor. He worked steadily in film and television, including the 1956 film The Swan, starring Grace Kelly. On the NBC television show Bonino, Andrew Bonino appeared as Ezio Pinza's son Andrew Bonino. Chet Allen, a 14-year-old Chet Allen who appeared as Jerry Bonino, was one of his co-stars on Bonino. At the Boychoir School, Parks and Allen were roommates. Little Tommy Manicotti (the kid from upstairs) on Jackie Gleason's The Honeymooners featured in Parks on repeating basis.

Parks, a senior at McKeesport High School, majored in music at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he studied with Aaron Copland from 1960 to 1963, and developed an interest in Mexican music. Parks began learning acoustic guitar in 1962. According to Parks, he heard 50 requinto solos of Mexican boleros but gave up the possibility because playing guitar had become too commonplace.

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Music career

Parks left Carnegie Tech in early 1963 in the hopes of being involved with the burgeoning West Coast beatnik subculture and performing with his older brother Carson Parks as the Steeltown Two (later expanded to three). The Greenwood County Singers later became the Greenwood County Singers. Future RCA Records engineer and recording artist Rick Jarrard was among the group's members. "I went to California later that day, I escaped John Cage," Parks later explained. "I escaped the abstractions, the music you can't recall, and the highbrow angst." Both Parks brothers performed together at various coffeehouses around San Diego, Santa Barbara, and San Francisco. One of the people at a Santa Barbara performance was found to be future Byrds member David Crosby, who at the time remark to friend David Lindley, "if they can get away with it, so can we." Parks tried to land a job on Art Linkletter's House Party in California, but was refused. Parks took a short break from this community, briefly moving to New England to be a member of the Brandywine Singers, earning up to $3,000 a week.

Benjamin Parks, a French horn player, was killed in a car crash in Frankfurt in 1963 while working for the US State Department in Germany one day before his 24th birthday. intérêts: Terry Gilkyson alerted Parks of the news and, in order to make up for it, hired Parks as an arranger for his song "The Bare Necessities," which was later shown in Disney's animated film The Jungle Book.

Parks responded vehemently to Beatlemania. "I lived under a billboard that said, 'The Beatles are coming,' and I got the feeling that it was a blight,' and that cultural implication would have ramification around the world. ... It's almost like the vestigial functions, the appendixes of the musical life, which I had just begun to have a scant connection with were being evicted from the body of music with the advent of folk music gone electric. So, I began to learn piano." He has consistently voiced his dissatisfaction with modern pop music in the mid-1960s and culture's growing anglophilia, even going so far as to say, "apart from Pet Sounds, I didn't find anything striking coming out of the United States." However, he had a favorable opinion of Bob Dylan's The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, and Parks has expressed admiration for Dylan's "speaking-voice" style. "I also looked at his written lyrics and realized that he didn't capitalize his letters," he said. He was attempting to imitate e.e. Cummings and, although it was unashamed, I thought it was in a good position."

Parks were becoming more interested in songwriting by 1964. Parks said that although bass player Hal Brown of the Brandywine Singers took him sightseeing around a decrepit "almost-ghost town," the two met in a chance meeting with the Charlatans in an old saloon. Parks blasted the 21-year-old Parks for his "preppy" and "square" appearance, and Parks responded by displaying a song he had written titled "High Coin," which stunned the audience so much that they asked if they could record it. Parks agreed, and the Charlatans' "High Coin" version of "High Coin" in San Francisco, which established Parks within the hippie counterculture, received a lot of airtime in San Francisco. Parks left the Brandywine Singers and signed an artist deal with MGM Records, which did not succeed commercially. Both Tom Wilson and his coworkers were created. Parks' compositions for other artists two years ago were becoming well-known for their lyrical wordplay and striking pictures. Lenny Waronker and Terry Melcher were reportedly obsessed with the song "High Coin," and Waronker contacted Parks to convince him to switch to Warner Bros. The two then turned their attention to the Tikis, a little-known group, and turned them into the novelty act Harpers Bizarre, which became a hit for the brand. Harpers Bizarre performed a few of Parks' compositions on their albums, and Parks himself appears on the recordings alongside other uncredited musician friends. Parks spent time as a session musician, arranger, and composer, and he became intimate with future close friends Randy Newman, Harry Nilsson, and Beach Boys bandleader Brian Wilson. Parks also appeared on the Byrds' album Fifth Dimension and turned down David Crosby's invitation to join the band.

Parks appeared on stage with Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention in 1965, where he was referred to as "Pinocchio." Parks said "because I didn't want to be screamed at," even though he attended Mothers' 1966 album Freak Out! At one time, he appeared as the opening act for the Lovin' Spoonful, together with guitarist Steve Young and Stephen Stills. "The Van Dyke Parks" appeared on "The Van Dyke Parks." "The All Golden" was Parks' first single written for Young. He was later invited to join Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, but declined.

During their inception in the early 1960s, parks were first aware of the Beach Boys. "I knew they didn't surf," he said about them in 1995, and I suspect they did not surf," they said. I was not a Beach Boy fan and 5 Trombones fan. "Something really dumb about it." "I loved Pet Sounds," he said. I came back to love them and believed they had done a fantastic job. To face the challenge of wresting the trophy out of the hands of these rebels, it seemed to me that they were in good fighting spirit." Wilson was still called "the greatest event of the era," but parks were reluctant to call him "genius," as Wilson was described as "a gifted guy with a lot of talent and a lot of people working harmoniously around him."

Parks was introduced to Wilson in 1966 at a party held at Terry Melcher's house, according to most. Wilson biographer Peter Ames Carlin dates the meeting to mid-July, although music critic Keith Badman cites February. However, Parks had already met Wilson at least once before, in December 1965, when David Crosby, a mutual friend, welcomed him to Wilson's house in Beverly Hills.

Wilson's (since-discredited) 1991 memoir, Wouldn't It Be Nice: My Own Story, said he knew Parks or knew of him in December 1964. Wilson's first LSD trip, according to author David McGowan, may have been Loren Schwartz, who had been assisting Wilson's first LSD journey. Wilson "sought me out" after he had heard about him through mutual acquaintances, "a neighborly couple" that experimented with psychedelic drugs, according to Parks. "People who experimented with psychedelics were seen as 'enlightened people,' and Brian sought to keep those enlightened people."

Wilson's 1991 memoir revealed that his first impressions of Parks was "a skinny kid with a unique perspective" and that he "had a fondness for amphetamines" at the time. Parks hesitated to tell the world that this had been confirmed, but added, "Those were his amphetamines." They were in his medicine cabinet. I'd never had amphetamines before. When Brian Wilson wanted his amphetamines at 3:30 a.m., he was working for him. Wilson was also introduced by Parks to Beatles publicist Derek Taylor, who later became the Beach Boys' publicist for a brief period of time in the 1960s.

Wilson first begged Parks to help him rewrite the lyrics to the song, but Parks turned down, claiming that he didn't think he could improve on them. Wilson was dissatisfied with Pet Sounds collaborator Tony Asher's lyrics for "Good Vibrations." Parks appears to have suggested to Wilson during a session to have the cellist play triplet notes during the recording of "Good Vibrations" in 1966. Brian Wilson was immediately convinced by the results that Parks would write lyrics for the Beach Boys' new record, the optimistic yet ill-fated Smile. Wilson bought several thousand dollars worth of marijuana and hashish for himself and his family, as well as Parks in the lead up to the album's writing and recording.

Parks' involvement in Smile effectively ended in early 1967 when he left to start working on his own in light of Wilson's increasingly fragile mental health, the company's controversies, and his signing to Warner Bros. "I walked away from the situation as soon as I realized that I was causing conflict between him and his other group members, and I didn't want to be the one to do so," he explained. I was under the assumption that it was Brian's job to bring definition to his own life. I stepped in, but I'took a leap before I looked.' I don't know if it's true, but it's the way I feel about it.... As soon as I found out I was going to eat or be eaten, I was immediately concerned. I was raised differently. I didn't want to be part of this game." Recording sessions came to a halt immediately after Wilson's withdrawal, and the album was shelved a few months later.

Parks revisited Frank Sinatra while at Warner Bros. and was considering retirement. Parks performed his brother Carson's "Somethin' Stupid" as a duet for Sinatra and his daughter Nancy to help ease this. Sinatra released "Somethin' Stupid" on Lee Hazlewood's recommendation, his first million-selling single. Parks at Warner Bros. were given credit for the purchase of Parks' one single: a cover of Donovan's "Colours" from his 1965 album Fairytale. It was credited to "George Washington Brown" — a fictitious pianist from South America — who was apparently trying to shield his family from the dangers of his "musical criminology" (infamy). Richard Goldstein's "Donovan's Colours" received an ecstatic two-page review that was the source of Parks' fame.

Parks released his first solo album, Song Cycle, in 1967, which was Lenny Waronker's product. Song Cycle includes interpretations of Randy Newman's "Vine Street," Donovan's "Colours," and the old "nearer, My God" to the "e" as a result. According to reports, the album's production cost more than US$35,000 (equivalent to US$270,000 today), Nigeria's most expensive pop album to date. Despite rave critical reviews, it fell short of being a cult record in later years, but it did gain a following as a cult album. Shortly after Song Cycle, Parks released "The Eagle and Me" as a standalone 7" single, "When Jesus Speak to Me" was the A-side of "On The Rolling Sea" which also sold poorly.

"Rock became a corporate name, just like the blues," Parks has been critical of the flower power movement, which came near the end of the decade. The organs of the animal were removed from the body. Some people had paid a lot of money to bottle the 1960s rebellion, but that didn't mean zero to me." "I believe 1969 was the death knell of the counter-culture revolution," he continued. The tragic case of Charles Manson exemplified the time's cultism; I was always suspicious of crowds. I didn't go to Woodstock because I was too late. I didn't want to be in a mudflat trying to get to a portable toilet. I had a bad feeling that this was a bad idea. So I stayed at Warner Bros' office for several reasons. One of the reasons was that I was working so hard and was too drained to really be turned around by what other people were doing."

Parks wanted to focus more behind-the-scenes and with less well-known artists, such as Randy Newman and Ry Cooder, who have expressed dissatisfaction with his music being "typecast" by his songs in the aftermath. The 1969 Santa Barbara oil leak was also life-altering for Parks and changed his "very reason for being." He met the Esso Trinidad Steel Band, a Trinidadian calypso band that had been performing with Liberace in Las Vegas, some time after. "I saw them as enslaved in their ties to Liberace," Parks said; "I thought it was vulgarity." 71 wanted to keep them from trivialization." Parks' inability to popularize calypso at that time became his focus, and he spent time with the steel band for many years. Parks said, "My favorite band was the Esso Trinidad Steel Band, with whom I worked with," he described his life then. I loved calypso all my life. guarantees that I knew every Trinidadian in Hermosa Beach back in the day, but there were at least 20 families back then. Now there is a large population.

Parks became one of the first owners of a prototype Moog synthesizer in the late 1960s and captured a number of experimental advertisements for various companies, including Datsun and the Ice Capades. On Biff Rose's second album, Children of Light, Parks appears on the Moog. Parks was also instrumental in the creation of the 1970 album In a Wild Sanctuary by the electronic group Beaver & Krause. Parks suggested that they record an ecological concept album with the use of field recordings and synthesizers when having lunch. Parks and Randy Newman helped the two boys get signed to the Warner Bros. brand.

Parks' travels to the West Indies in 1972 inspired his second solo album, Discover America, a tribute to Trinidad and Tobago's islands as well as calypso music. Parks have been re-arranged and re-produced obscure songs and calypso hits, as well as calypso masterpieces. Parks released the Esso album for the Esso Trinidad Steel Band in 1971. It was planted as a tribute to Prince Bernhard, the head of the World Wildlife Fund at the time. "Everything was directed to make it a proper, political, green album," Parks said. In the 1975 release Clang of the Yankee Reaper, this trend was maintained.

When working on Discover America at Sunset Sound Recorders, Parks was brought in to produce the third album by seminal Japanese folk rock band Happy End. "Goodbye America, Goodbye Japan" (also assisted in the writing of the closing track, "Sayonara Nippon"))). Parks became acquainted with Haruomi Hosono, who went on to be one of the founding members of the Yellow Magic Orchestra, some time after. Parks then went on to participate in a variety of Hosono-related projects.

Although Smile had disbanded in mid-1967, Parks' relationships with Wilson were not, at the time being. He was instrumental in getting the Beach Boys to reprise and contributed to "A Day in the Life of a Tree" and the writing of "Sail On, Sailor." Several songs with his lyrics, written during the Smile wavelengths, appeared on later Beach Boys albums, including "Surf's Up," "Heroes and Villains," and "Cabinessence."

Parks took over Warner Bros.'s audio/visual department in September 1970. This group was the first to record videos to market records. Parks built the department by himself and had few workers at Warner Bros. Ry Cooder, Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman, Earth, Wind & Fire, and Captain Beefheart were among the more than a dozen promotional films describing artists. They were by nature documentary films that could be rented or purchased by any recognized music school. Parks later described the service as "progressive," but they could also provide an income for musicians who were hard-pressed into tours that needed drugs to sustain them." Despite the fact that each production lasted about ten minutes and needed at least $18,500 to produce, one exception was a video for the Esso Trinidad Steel Band, which ran about forty minutes. It's also one of two Parks films to have survived since then, with the other being a Ry Cooder promotional video.

Parks released only two albums in the 1970s, but he had appeared on many albums released by colleagues in or around Los Angeles, including Harry Nilsson, who was dubbed the "smartest guy" he had ever encountered in the music industry. Parks dealt with prescription drug use in the 1970s. Later in life, he described himself as being "dead for five years" and that he spent the first half of the decade "trying to regain an interest in life." "When I was in charge of audio-visual production and A&R workers at Warner Bros., a man came into my office and told me, Alice. "I knew that my days were limited as a person really interested in the music business right away." "I promised that every artist would receive 25% of the net proceeds of the rentals or sales," Parks said of his employees at this time. It was supposed to be a good market for the artist. Warners soon became dissatisfied with what seemed to be a fair share of creative success, and therefore simply isolated me."

Parks left his day job at Warner Bros. and "retreated from greater cause causes," aiming for the more gregarious plain-speaking of the film community...with no less delight." He spent the next several years, as well as the majority of the 1980s, concentrating more on motion picture and television production, writing scores for high-profile films, such as Popeye, and appearing as musical director for television shows like The Billy Crystal Comedy Hour.

Parks made a modest comeback in 1984 with the release of the album Jump!, which featured songs based on Uncle Remus and Br'er Rabbit's stories. With Americana additions such as banjo, mandolin, and steel drums, the album depicts a Broadway-style reduced orchestra. The album was made by parks but they did not plan or produce it. Martin Kibbee contributed to the lyrics. Parks also wrote a series of children's books, including Jim Jones (with Malcolm Jones), Jump Again, and Jump On Over, based on Br'er Rabbit tales and briefly accompanied by Parks' own album Jump! The books feature sheet music for selected songs from the album. Fisherman & His Wife, a park book published in 1991, was also published in a cassette.

Parks had turned down future collaborations with Wilson, but instead of being told by an unidentified spokesperson that "Mike Love is Brian Wilson's sole collaborator." Despite knowing that Parks performed on "Kokomo" and the album Summer in Paradise, he did not work with Wilson until a few years later, on the aborted album Sweet Insanity.

He wrote "City Of Light," "It's A B-Movie," "Cutting Edge," and "Worthless," three of which were used in Jerry Rees' film The Brave Little Toaster. Parks became much more active in planning and releasing albums by independent artists in the 1980s and 1990s, which inspired him to return more fully to the music industry.

Following a leap! In 1989, Warner Brothers released Tokyo Rose. This concept album examines the relationship between Japan and the United States from the 19th century to the "trade war" at the time of its publication. The songs are orchestralized Japanese instruments and old Parks Caribbean favorites, such as steel drums. The album did not sell well, and was not widely noticed by critics. He appeared in Japan with performers including Haruomi Hosono, Syd Straw, harmonicist Tommy Morgan, and steelpan player Yann Tomita to promote the album.

Parks formed the album Orange Crate Art between 1992 and 1995, collaborating with then-reservative Brian Wilson to produce the collection Orange Crate Art. Except "This Town Goes Down at Sunset" and George Gershwin's experimental "Lullaby," Parks wrote all of the songs on the album, with vocals by Wilson. Orange Crate Art is a tribute to the early 1900s in Southern California, as well as a lyrical salute to Northern California's scenic beauty. Wilson had been involved in court orders pertaining to years of psychiatric neglect to which he had been exposed, and it was recorded during a trying period. "I discovered him alone in a room staring at a television," Parks said. It was off." Poor commercial reception greeted the album, much to Parks' dissatisfaction.

Moonlighting: Live at the Ash Grove, Parks' first live album, showcases a love for nineteenth-century American pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk's career, as well as performances of several of Parks' more popular and lesser-known songs. Sid Page is the concertmaster of the live ensemble.

Parks' relationship with Australian rock band Silverchair began in 2002 when he appeared on their fourth studio album Diorama. Parks was attracted by lead singer and guitarist Daniel Johns' music, and he has said that his biggest drawback to the band was Johns' courage. He orchestrated orchestral arrangements for Silverchair's fifth album, Young Modern, in 2007. Daniel Johns, the band's lead singer, travelled to Prague with Parks to have the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra's arrangements recorded. Parks uses the word Johns in the album's name.

Wilson contacted parks in 2003 to help with the planning of a live performance of Smile. He agreed, and the pair re-recorded the album and then unveiled it on a world tour, beginning with the world premiere at the Royal Festival Hall in London, which Parks attended. Parks later performed some songs to That Lucky Old Sun, which was released in 2008. Brian Wilson's album included almost new compositions on the album, but with no input from Parks compared to the previous Smile collaboration.

Parks performed two songs together on January 8, 2008, as part of the show Concrete Frequency: Songs of the City, and they performed in 2008. An Invitation was released in 2008.

Parks appeared in The People Speak, a documentary feature film based on historian Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States," a dramatic and musical tribute to everyday Americans. On the History Channel, Parks appeared with Bob Dylan and Ry Cooder on the documentary broadcast on December 13, 2009. They performed "Do Re Mi" and, apparently, a few other Guthrie songs that were left out of the final edit.

"I don financiar have an album in me at this time," Parks wrote in 2010. I do have some songs, so I'm putting them out as 45 rpm stereo recordings this summer." Parks released six double-sided singles between 2011 and 2012, including new original songs, collaborations, unreleased archived recordings, re-recordings of older tracks, and covers. In addition, Gaby Moreno and Inara George of The Bird and the Bee performed guest spots on the singles. Parks has also stressed the importance of singles' artwork, created by experimental artists such as Klaus Voormann, Ed Ruscha, and Art Spiegelman. Artist Charles Ray also sculpted two life-size statues of Parks.

Parks was contacted by electronic musician Skrillex, who requested that he handle orchestral arrangements in August 2011. His arranging work was first published on the Bangarang EP in December 2011 as the iTunes-exclusive bonus track "Skrillex Orchestral Suite by Varien."

Parks admitted in 2013:

Capitol Records announced a compilation box set of the Beach Boys' Smile sessions in November 2011. Despite initially giving his permission, Parks was completely absent from The Smile Sessions' marketing campaign and liner notes and refused to comment on the box set. In promotional interviews for the Smile Sessions and the Beach Boys' 50th Reunion Tour, Mike Love said that Smile was due to substance use and that Parks' drug use was largely influenced by the project's drug use. Brian Wilson's off-the-cuff remark that it was Parks who introduced him to LSD and amphetamines, something Parks has never denied. In a post that accused Love of Mammon and historical revisionism, Parks later responded to these allegations via his web site later in 2011. The Smile Sessions received the Grammy Award for Best Historical Album in February 2013.

Parks performed with Haruomi Hosono for the first environmental year in years while in Tokyo in January 2013. Parks revealed the release of Songs Cycled, a compilation of his six 2011–12 singles into a single album in March 2013. It was Parks' first full album of relatively new work since 1995's Orange Crate Art. The album was released in Bella Union on May 6, 2013. Parks appeared at the 2013 Adelaide Festival with Daniel Johns and Kimbra. Parks curated a "Best-of" CD by New Orleans pianist/composer Tom McDermott in September 2013. On November 22, parks commemorated the 1963 Kennedy assassination by releasing a new original work titled "I'm History."

After about forty minutes of playing piano, the parks underwent unsuccessful hand surgery in 2014, causing his hands to freeze. Parks appeared at the Largo in Los Angeles on May 9, 2015, in what he described as his "final piano appearance" by thestatist. Among the featured artists were singer Gaby Moreno, songwriter-producer Joe Henry; Grizzly Bear's Edward Droste; New Zealand singer-songwriter Kimbra; and jazz guitarist-composer Grant Geissman. "It will" set poetry to music, to highlight poems, according to Parks in upcoming projects. So I'll be back performing once I get it done. I'd be looking for a legendary string quartet to bring things to a breaking minimum. I can imagine a quartet in Peoria, or Europe, doing something like this. "I also want to find a film project that excites me."

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