Van Dyke Parks (born in 1941 in the Deep South, in Mississippi, graduated from the Carnegie Institute in Pennsylvania, arrived in California in 1963) is an eccentric and brilliant figure who carried out one of the boldest operations ever attempted on melodic music, transforming "pop" into a form of chamber music, injecting the "zeitgeist" of the postmodern era into a simple and relaxing sound, adapting the cinematic technique of "montage" to the format of kitsch music.

In Hollywood he went through the usual apprenticeship: aspiring actor, aspiring singer-songwriter (initially in folk circles), aspiring soundtrack composer, session man for recording studios (he plays piano on Eight Miles High by the Byrds and organ on Fifth Dimension), and finally producer. When he produced two bubblegum hits in 1967, Parks obtained the credibility he had been seeking. His grandiose ideas did not have much luck, however: Smile, the legendary album by the Beach Boys whose production he supervised, was shelved (the textual montage of Heroes And Villains was his), Tim Buckley, Ry Cooder, Frank Zappa and many others made use of his musical genius but certainly did not become stars. Parks nevertheless earned a well-deserved reputation as an orchestral arranger, as a sort of anti-Bacharach, capable of overturning the meaning of "orchestra" in a way no less subversive than the psychedelia of those years.

A typical recording-studio rat, Parks would record very few albums under his own name, but each time he would astonish the milieu with his mad countercurrent turns.

Song Cycle (Warner, 1968 - Edsel, 1986), the result of four years of gestation, is the album on which Parks could finally unleash his revolutionary ideas in arranging. Perhaps for the first time in its history, the popular song acquired the stature of a chamber-music piece. The "cycle" of impressionistic vignettes on everyday life in Los Angeles employs an astonishing catalog of sonic trivia: orchestras, vocal distortions, atonality, marching-band fanfares, noises, choirs, music-hall marches, psychedelic effects, soundtrack-like melodic fantasies. Parks revisits the entire history of song, from the parlor song of Stephen Foster to the crooning of Cole Porter, to compose an apocalyptic fresco of plastic civilization, an operation similar to the one carried out by Charles Ives with his symphonies through frenetic accumulation of sonic data and to the operetta-collages of early Frank Zappa.
Parks is the storyteller of an undefined age that summarizes all previous ages. Closer to the jovial spirit of the ragtime era are Palm Desert and The All Golden, which evoke strolls along boulevards or evenings at the fair, whereas oppressed by dark and martial sounds are the more expressionistic Widow's Walk and By The People, the masterpiece, in which the endless comic touches serve as a buttress for an atmosphere that is in fact tragic. In these latter pieces one grasps the true spirit of the work, which is above all music of depersonalization and solitude, music of the agony of the individual suffocated by an incomprehensible crowd of signs.
Parks obviously delighted in impersonating the most anachronistic singer-songwriter in the world, in dishing out graceful and elegant period gags, in playing with a grotesque apparatus of orchestras, female choirs, trombones, accordions.
The album lists 78 musicians who participated in the recordings. The only instrumental piece, Donovan's Colours, originally a 1968 single released under the pseudonym George Washington Brown, was an ante-litteram example of postmodern deconstruction.

Parks finally made a career in the recording industry and for several years was too busy with work. When the follow-up to that first masterpiece finally appeared, Discover America (Warner, 1972 - Edsel, 1986) threw everything back into question. The record was an outrageous joke: a shameless tribute to calypso. In reality, behind the style lurks another exercise in populist impressionism, a photostatic reproduction of the 1930s. Increasing the similarities with Frank Zappa, the songs are hilarious satires of the Establishment. Although less revolutionary than its predecessor, the album is just as creative and also has the advantage of being easy to listen to.

The Clang Of The Yankee Reaper (Warner, 1975) was a disappointment (apart from the title track) because it proposed a much more conventional "pop" sound (and many covers). Not surprisingly, Parks would remain silent for almost a decade.

Jump (Warner, 1984), based on stories from Southern folklore, instead returns to the "authorial" kitsch of Song Cycle, still inspired by the musical and by Frank Zappa (the instrumental overture of Jump), parodying ragtime (Hominy Grove), Walt Disney cartoons (Come Along), vaudeville ballets (Many A Mile To Go), circus music (the other instrumental, Taps), the lavish shows of Busby Berkeley (Look Away), caf�-concert music (Opportunity For Two), Viennese operetta and marching bands.

Tokyo Rose (Geffen, 1989) is another concept album, this time focusing on the relationships between East and West. While returning to his obsession with calypso, this is his least inspired work after Yankee Reaper.

Fisherman And His Wife (Windhal Hill, 1991)

Orange Crate Art (Warner Bros., 1995) is a collaboration with Brian Wilson, but mostly written by Parks, and marks a return to his favorite upbeat, celestial, Caribbean lullabies (Island In The Sun) and to his favorite format of the thematic song cycle (this time set between San Francisco and Sacramento). The production is Parks at his most creative and cohesive.

Moonlighting (Warner, 1998) is a live album that finds Parks in a humble, laid-back mood.

Arrangements Vol. 1 (Bananastan, 2011) collects covers.

He resurfaced with Songs Cycled (2013).