The Early Years - remembered by C. Carson Parks

In the early 1960s Van Dyke Parks played in a few folk ensembles, most of the time together with his elder brother Carson. This page is based on quotes and images taken with kind permisson from C. Carson Parks' very detailed official website.

The Steeltown Two

C. Carson Parks remembers the beginnings of the Steeltown Two, a duo consisting of himself and his brother. (N.B. There was an earlier incarnation of the Steeltown Two featuring Carson Parks, but not Van Dyke): "It was just before Christmas 1962, so I went back to McKeesport, to my folks' house, and talked them into letting my brother Van Dyke drop out of Carnegie music department in his second year and come back with me to California. Perhaps they figured I was a "survivor", or that "big brother" would take care of "baby brother." Van Dyke played no guitar, but in 90 days, he knew more than most folks know after many years! We scrambled around and got a repertoire going, and started to play many of the Southern California coffee houses that I had been in before. Although we didn't do any duo recording, we did some soundtrack movie work with Terry [Gilkyson], often with Van Dyke on piano/ keyboard, as that was/is his forte. Mostly, this was for the Disney studios, as Terry was doing a lot of writing for them at the time." (quoted from www.ccarsonparks.com)

The Southcoasters/ The Steeltown Three

The duo soon expanded to a trio. The threem who named themselves both "Te Steeltwon Three" and "The Southcoasters", cut two 45s, "San Francsico Bay" and "Rock Mountain". The latter was both released on the Montclaire and the Kapp label: "Van Dyke and I had an apartment in Seal Beach, CA, about two blocks from the sand. It was somewhat of a financial struggle for a while, but we eked it out. Somehow, we met a gal named Pat Peyton, who sang mostly smoky ballads in piano bars. We worked up three or four songs as a trio and made some demos, but not much came of it." (from www.ccarsonparks.com)

The Greenwood County Singers
The Grenwood County Singers are Terry [Gilkyson] had a vision of forming a larger, mixed-gender group. He had sung the lead on "On Top Of Old Smoky", with The Weavers, to great success, and the three- and four-member versions of The Easy Riders made good music. Once, over lunch at Nicodell's, he mentioned this idea to Randy Sparks, and before Terry was able to get it together, Randy had put together The New Christy Minstrels. Through our playing at all these clubs, Van Dyke and I had gotten to know many other performers, both singles and duos. With Pat Peyton, we recruited another duo (Reg Bannister & Tom Robbins), a bass player (Dave Backhaus) with whom we had worked, a single (Al Johnston), a multi-instrumentalist (Sandy Mosely), and a soprano (Gaile Foote.) We did our first album (on Kapp Records) with this configuration, primarily Terry Gilkyson songs. Then, we played a couple weeks in The Ice House. It became obvious that we were too large - - there were too many mouths to feed - - and we needed to combine jobs. We let Tom Robbins and Al Johnston go, did some re-arranging, and told Sandy he had to start singing. All told, The Greenwoods did four albums and several additional singles for Dave Kapp and Kapp Records." (from www.ccarsonparks.com)
The Greenwood County Singers never actually split. It was rather a slow ending, by more and more of the members leaving to join other projects: "All this time, it became more and more of a struggle to keep a viable unit together. Van Dyke left for a while, and joined the Brandywine Singers in New England, then returned. Reg was drafted, Dave was going to get drafted, and qualified for the Army band, but had to enlist. Pat Peyton left and got married, and we went through two other altos after her. Each time, we probably had an upcoming engagement, so we had to cram like mad to bring the new people up to speed. Fortunately, early on, even on primitive home tape recorders, we had the forethought to tape the songs, with only one or two people on each mike, which made learning the parts easier. So, in addition to hearing or reading your part, you could hear what others were doing, and where your part fit in the mix. After November of 1966, we had planned to take Christmas off, and look for some more replacements. Then "Something Stupid" came out, and the advice to me was just to quit trying to fill the gaps left by people leaving, or because the draft boards were winning. So, The Greenwoods just faded out, not with a bang, but just a whimper." (from www.ccarsonparks.com).
The Brandywine Singers and The Greenwood County Singers were the last ensembles Van Dyke Parks played in, after that he moved on to building up his solo career.