Van Dyke Parks - Clang Of The Yankee Reaper '2012 [1976]

Tracks list

 In a field where the term genius is handed out freely, Van Dyke Parks is the
real article. As a session musician, composer, arranger, lyricist, and singer,
hes contributed significantly to several decades worth of inimitable
masterpieces credited to other artists, as well as generating two or three
masterpieces of his own. Born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in 1941, he was a
musical prodigy and attended the American Boychoir School in Princeton, New
Jersey. He studied the clarinet and also worked as a child actor, on-stage and
on television, co-starring with Ezio Pinza in the 1953 comedy series Bonino, and
also working in movies, including Grace Kellys final film, The Swan (1958).
He remained dedicated to music, however, and studied at the Carnegie Institute
and majored in music at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1964, a year after
graduating, he was signed to MGM Records as a recording artist, releasing Come
to the Sunshine, which had some local chart action in Phoenix, Arizona, and
threatened to do something nationally without succeeding. (It did promise enough
to require that Parks put together a band to back him on-stage, whose members
included a young Stephen Stills.) He became a session musician and worked with
Sonny & Cher (when they were Anthony & Cleopatra), as well as playing sessions
for producer Terry Melcher on records by Paul Revere & the Raiders and other
artists. On the Byrds Fifth Dimension album he played the Hammond B-3 organ, and
he also played keyboards on sessions for Judy Collins, and arranged songs for
Tim Buckley.
It was also Melcher who got Parks together in 1966 with Brian Wilson of the
Beach Boys. A prodigiously gifted composer, Wilson was no lyricist, and he
needed one who could match the daring new music he was devising in his head --
this resulted in their collaboration on the SMiLE album. Initially, only Heroes
and Villains emerged from their work together as a modest hit single but a
well-loved one, and the project languished over Wilsons worsening emotional and
mental state in 1967. Fragments and pieces of the project turned up on ensuing
albums into the early 70s, and Parks also played a key role in completing a
song, Sail on Sailor, that gave the Beach Boys a rare early-70s single success.
(In an early-80s interview, incidentally, Parks said -- without blame or
recriminations -- that he had never received a penny in royalties from his work
with Wilson or the sales of the Beach Boys records, a situation that was no
doubt tied to the confusion surrounding the sale and ownership of their
publishing, which was later nullified.)
In 1967, as work on SMiLE came to a halt, Parks was lured to the newly
invigorated Warner Bros. label by producer/A&R chief Lenny Waronker. His new
professional berth led to a single, Donovans Colours, credited to George
Washington Brown, and its response -- especially a pioneering piece of pop/rock
criticism by journalist Richard Goldstein -- helped redefine rock as distinct
from rock & roll. Parks and Waronker were responsible for transforming the Tikis
into the pop/rock novelty act Harpers Bizarre, which became a new success for
the label. Out of their work together, and all of these other projects -- and
the creative stew that Waronker had set boiling at Warner Bros. and its new
sister label, Reprise -- grew Parks Song Cycle, a debut album that was the very
definition of the word eclectic, incorporating folk, classical, Broadway,
ragtime, jazz, 50s pop, and rock & roll influences. It won the Record of the
Year Award from High Fidelity/Stereo Review, and although it never sold in big
numbers, the LP stayed in print for nearly two decades.
He then did session work with a variety of artists, not releasing his second
album, Discover America, which revealed his immersion in Trinidadian music,
until 1972. Clang of the Yankee Reaper, another eclectic collection, followed in
1976. But Parks maintained his day job -- film work on scores by Ry Cooder and
others, writing and arranging for Shelley Duvalls childrens TV series, and other
pursuits. Finally, in 1984 came the brilliant Jump!, a concept album (and
proposed stage musical) based on the Uncle Remus tales of Joel Chandler Harris.
It was followed in 1989 by Tokyo Rose, which concerned the state of
American-Japanese relations. In 1998, he released a live album, and in the next
decade he collaborated anew with Brian Wilson, who finally released a finished
realization of SMiLE with new recordings on the Nonesuch label in 2004. (By that
time, however, dozens of unauthorized bootleg editions of tracks from the 1967
sessions had surfaced, to the delight of fans.)
Two years later, Parks began contributing lyrics to another Brian Wilson
project, That Lucky Old Sun, as well as lending his arrangements to Silverchairs
Young Modern (his second collaboration with the Australian band) and Inara
Georges An Invitation. Around this time Parks also worked on string arrangements
for indie harpist Joanna Newsoms second album, Ys, among her most involved and
ambitious work. In 2009, Parks appeared alongside Ry Cooder and Bob Dylan as
part of the documentary The People Speak, a film that saw musicians scoring a
series of letters, speeches, and diary entries from various unrelated sources.
The next project to focus solely on Parks music came in 2011 when he began
issuing a series of 7 singles. There were six singles in total, featuring a wide
variety of never before released material including new original songs, archival
recordings, cover songs, and re-recordings of older material. The 12 songs from
this project were eventually compiled and released in 2013 as the Songs Cycled
album. In 2013, Parks also released Super Chief: Music for the Silver Screen, an
orchestral concept album fashioned from music he had written for movies over the
years; originally issued as a collectors item for Record Store Day 2013, the
album received a wider release in 2014. ~ Bruce Eder & William Ruhlmann
TRACKLIST:

01. Clang of the Yankee Reaper
02. City on the Hill
03. Pass That Stage
04. Another Dream
05. Youre a Real Sweetheart
06. Love Is the Answer
07. Iron Man
08. Tribute to Spree
09. Soul Train
10. Cannon In D

Van Dyke Parks - vocals

 Jesse Ed Davis - guitar
 Chilli Charles - drums
 Jim Keltner - drums
 Bobby Keys - saxophone
 Fred Tackett - guitar
 Klaus Voormann - bass
 Bob Thompson - orchestration
 Robert Greeidge - pan (steel drums)

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