July 2008: Our J.A. PARKS section is being re-written and re-constructed; many of the internal links are broken due to the failure of the library’s old web server. An older version of J.A. PARKS is archived at the “wayback machine.”

			J.A. PARKS BOOKS		J.A. PARKS (SONGS)		COMPOSERS AND LYRICISTS
		ccording to the news articles that were published after his death on October 17, 1945, James Asher Parks was born near Livonia, Pennsylvania May 22, 1863. He’s listed as 38 years old in the 1900 Census data which has 1862 as his birth year. The Greenwood Cemetery records also list him as born in 1862.

In his own account of his life, he said he went to Chicago at the age of seventeen. In Chicago he worked for a wood finishing company by day and studied music in the evenings and on Saturday.

He came to Nebraska to visit an older brother at Milford, and supervised the Nebraska Conservatory of Music at Lincoln, NE from 1887 to 1899. In addition he operated a music studio in York.

J.A. Parks married Miss Helena M. Knott of York on April 18, 1890 and established the J.A. Parks Music Company in York a year later. In the early years, the Music Company included a retail shop that sold music and musical instruments. Mr. Parks also gave lessons and produced musical events in addition to composing, arranging, and publishing vocal music. He appears among York College faculty in an 1890s photo in the college archives. He also taught vocal music in the York public schools. He composed a light opera, “The Judge,” which was performed by his students. Several 1890s “Christmas Cantatas” published by Lorenz & Co. of Dayton, Ohio have music composed by Mr. Parks, and he was associate editor of The Choir Leader, a Lorenz publication first issued in 1894. Several early Parks compositions were copyright by Lorenz, and some copies of the earliest books have the Lorenz imprint.

Mr. Parks’ listing in the 1940 Who’s Who In Nebraska gives 1896 as the founding date for the publishing business, and the oldest titles published by the J.A. Parks Company are copyright 1896. Based on items in York newspapers, it appears he had withdrawn from the retail shop partnership by 1901. As his catalogue and sales grew, the music publishing company and teaching provided a living. Mr. Parks traveled to promote his music. He was active in Chautauqua and Rotary. Articles in York newspapers give glimpses of his business and musical activities. For example, Mr. Parks’ comments about his business and compositions in a September 26, 1906 article in the York Republican quote an article from the Salt Lake City Inter-Mountain Republican. Mr. Parks was in Salt Lake City promoting his music as one stop on a sales tour of the west. A series of local newspaper articles published in conjunction with the May 22, 1938 program celebrating Mr. Parks’ 75th birthday reveal other details of the composer / publisher’s life and work. CHRONOLOGY provides some details and cites sources for information about J.A. Parks. Lincoln City Libraries’ Polley Music Library includes Parks in their “Music of Old Nebraska” web site.

The Music Company was a source of community pride in the first half of the 20th Century. Although Mr. Parks’ music may sound very old-fashioned today, his compositions and arrangements, and the products of his publishing company were widely circulated in their day and deserve to be remembered.

Kilgore Memorial Library began collecting J.A. Parks Music Company publications and information about Mr. Parks and the Parks family in the mid-1990s. Kilgore Memorial Library would appreciate being informed of locations where published or archival materials about J.A. Parks and his music might be located. We research in local sources and on the Internet as time permits. Our goal is to make this web site as comprehensive a resource about J.A. Parks’ music as we can.

The listings of J.A. Parks Music Company publications are presented in three complementary sections:

1. BOOKS lists all known J.A. PARKS books, including books and other printed materials from other publishers that include pieces by Parks. The titles and other information about the individual compositions within the books are given if known.
2. SONGS lists all known J.A. PARKS songs, with a link to the collection(s) the piece was published in (if known), and indication if the piece was published as a stand-alone (if known). SONGS are listed two ways:
   • TITLES alphabetically. A separate listing is provided for each distinct arrangement of a title.
   • OCTAVOs (sheet music). OCTAVOS comprises sheet music issued by number, and includes smaller groups of titles known to have been issued in large “sheet music” format, and other miscellaneous forms.
3. COMPOSERS AND LYRICISTS of the songs published by the J.A. Parks Music Company. The listing includes links to relevant web sites when they could be located. Work on this portion has not kept pace with the alphabetical and numeric song lists. The link above is to a “frozen” copy at the “wayback machine.”