Established on January 3, 1943,
in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. I'm the fourth son of a neurologist/psychiatrist, nurtured musically from the get-go.
My first instrument, the clarinet (using the Albert system). With that, I always sat first chair. My brothers played trumpet, French horn, and doublebarrel euphonium. Each Advent season, we hit the neighborhood with Noels.
I peaked in the '50s. At age nine, I boarded at the Columbus Boychoir School near Princeton, New Jersey, ushering in an intense musical immersion that lasted from 1952 to 1957. Princeton and surrounding woodlands were a rapture. In town, I sang 'Stille Nacht' for Einstein, who returned to the porch and played a lilting obligato. Read on...
These releases — six 45s with sleeve art by eminent artists — were Van Dyke Parks' first commercial solo recordings since the 1998 Warners album Moonlighting: Live at the Ash Grove, and return the listener to a last-century experience: listening to a song, studying the sleeve art, and getting up to flip the record. Here is true high-fidelity: the superior sound of music on vinyl, and the work of a musician following his own idiosyncratic path. Read more...