Van Dyke Parks - High Coin

[frightfulhog]

I've been fascinated by this track for a while. According to VDP, it's the first song he wrote, it was covered by everyone from Bobby Vee to the West coast Pop Art Experimental Band, and it's a brilliant composition, as good as anything on Song Cycle and more straightforward than any track on the album. My favorite version is Harpers Bizarre's dreamy, VDP-assisted version (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdQ3f5TlM8g), but just looking through version online, it's been arranged dozens of different, often fascinating ways. More info on its composition is here: http://www.sodajerker.com/episode-51-van-dyke-parks/

Does anyone have opinions/more info on this song? Also, is there any available recording of VDP performing this track solo?

[rn57]

I once emailed Van Dyke about a quote in Tim Forster's pioneering West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band interview where Michael Lloyd is quoted as saying that he and the other WCPAEB'ers saw Van Dyke perform High Coin and decided to cover it themselves - but were unable to get sheet music for some reason and so ended up trying to figure out the chord changes and melody on their own, which is sort of evident on the version released. VDP replied: "I would never be so discourteous as to fail to properly learn and record another artist's composition."  Decades later, he was evidently still irritated about that track.

[JK]

Well I looked around but couldn't find a VDP solo version; the one by Harper's Bizarre with Van Dyke on piano comes closest and works fine for me too. Here for completeness' sake is TWCPAEB's "discourteous" cover version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ASz3JFW8GI

I see "High Coin" was the closing track on their second album, Part One (their first album was called Volume One).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Part_One_(album)