Carol Parks
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Carol Parks (born Carol Celeste Carmichael, 30 November 1949, Pasadena, California) is a zine author, composer, painter, and journal artist. She was at one time married to fellow musician Dean Parks. Both live in Los Angeles, California.
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[edit] Career
As a teenager, Parks, then Carmichael was a member of the Jimmy Joyce Children's Choir, performing with such luminaries as Art Linkletter (Kids Say the Darndest Things), Ann-Margaret and Johnny Green. One of Parks' most significant musical contributions to the film world was for 1986's The Care Bears Movie II: A New Generation, for which she and Dean wrote all of its seven songs. Additionally she sang main titles for Where's Papa?, The Miracle Worker, Save the Tiger, Lifeguard, The Last Picture Show, and the television program, Ironside. As a Hollywood studio singer since the early 1970s, she contracted for the Andy Williams and Tom Jones shows, and was in the choir for Sonny & Cher, Cher, and Danny Kaye. Her featured backing vocalist performances in pop were most notably on "Desiderata", "It Never Rains In Southern California", "Undercover Angel", "Rock Me Gently", "The Goodbye Girl", "Little Green Apples", "Train of Thought", "That's The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia" and "Delta Dawn".
She produced Rita Jean Bodine and Hodges, James and Smith in the seventies, The New Monkees in the eighties and associate produced for Donald Fagan, Walter Becker and Ricky Lee Jones in the nineties. She contracted recordings for Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton, Johnny Rivers, Lambert & Potter, Michael O'Martian, Marty Paich, Melanie, Lee Greenwood, Helen Reddy, Alan O'Day, Andy Kim, Albert Hammond, David Gates, Johnny Mathis, Vicki Carr, Billie Joel, and many others.
Parks sang commercials for Ernest and Julio Gallo, Avco Financial Services, Bank of America, Toyota, Datsun and countless other clients. Under the names Honey White and the Night Man, Kim Carmichael and Carol Carmichael she recorded two albums Songs My Father Taught Me, The Carol Carmichael Songbook, and two singles, "All Night's Alright", "Shake A Hand", and published a songbook of the same title. She also recorded two albums Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Touring The Motor City, plus a single "Summertime Love" with, and was a road member of, The New Christy Minstrels and The Back Porch Majority, with such notables as The Hagar Twins, Gary Mule Deer, Randy Sparks, Kin Vassey and Fats Johnson. Parks recorded "The Persuader" on the first automated recording console invented by George Massenburg at The Complex in the early eighties.
[edit] Recently
After having made her first recording at age six, she retired from the music industry nearly fifty years later to devote herself entirely to painting, journaling and attaining her degree in fine arts in 2004, after attending the Art Center College of Design and Otis College of Art and Design. She now resides in the NoHo Arts District of Los Angeles where she paints full time, hosts visiting artists (including the likes of Lynne Perrella, LK Ludwig, and Jesse Reno) for workshops in her studio, and produces her art zine, 'Art Freak'.
[edit] Personal life
Parks is the daughter of contemporary Christian music composer/conductor/arranger Ralph Carmichael, and mother of Los Angeles based photographer Amanda Parks and Philadelphia based psychologist, Acacia Parks-Sheiner. Parks' mother, Evangeline Carmichael McPherson is married to Dr. Rolf McPherson, son of the famous evangelist, Aimee Semple McPherson.
