Clyde Parks:
CLASS OF 1973
Omaha North High SchoolClass of 1973
Omaha, NE
Clyde's Story
To everyone who just knew that I was going into the military when I graduated...I didn't. I was having too much fun pursuing other adventures. Spent a couple of years in college going for a degree in broadcasting until I found out how much DJ's really made. I decided instead to switch avenues and work behind the scenes. I got training in electronics and picked up my FCC license with Broadcast endorsement.
All of this led me to my first foray as a road musician. (No I hadn't put the drums away. As a matter of fact, I spent so much time, up to this point, on base with the guys in the Offutt Air Force Band, the Colonel for the band knew me onsite and offered to pull strings to get me stationed there if I would enlist. I just had no interest in joining the military.) I sat in with a band that was passing through Omaha, intending to just play a couple of songs and wound up as the drummer of New Life the next night, on their 1st return engagement in 2 years to their hometown of Minneapolis.
I spent a year and a half with them until they disbanded and then I came back to Omaha. I was working various retail management jobs and gigging on the side with various groups in Omaha until my next foray on the road as a drummer. That one took me to Sequin, TX and a funk band by the name of the Syndicate of Sound. We did 1 niters throughout Texas and Louisiana. Not much money but some great exposure as we fronted for Betty Wright and B. B. King.
Unfortunately, not enough of big paydays to keep me there, when I got a call from friends Carl Moore and Mac Hadley to take a grant and come back to Omaha to study and teach at The Omaha School of Music, I jumped at the chance. During my time there I worked with some of the best musicians and performers ever. I helped start the group Starflight during my time there and that led to being the opening act at the Omaha Civic Auditorium for The Bar-Kays and Kool and the Gang.
Once my grant ran out for the school I went back on the road with an east coast show band called Hot Fun. Got married to my best friend of 10 years, Darlen...Expand for more
e, while I was on the road and played in some really nice places including Atlantic City, Palm Beach and the Fontainebleau Miami Beach. (I was playing DC the day that President Reagan got shot. (You want to talk about craziness in that city for the next week.)
Well by then I was tired of being on the road, so I came back to Omaha intending to stay just long enough to figure out what I wanted to do with my future since my daughter was about to start school. Two and a half years later and the heartbreak of turning down an offer from Marvin Gaye to go on the road as his personal aide, ( I still can't believe that I turned that down, but then again, his father killed him 8 months later) The reason I turned him down was because I was working with a friend in creating an independent record and production company and was in the middle of setting up a 6 month tour of Africa as the company's Stage/Road Manager when our financial backing fell through.
It was then that I decided I needed to get away from the Big O again. Another good friend invited me to come and stay with his family in Phoenix, AZ for a while. Well, I fell in love with the city and have been here for more than 25 years now. (2012) I now work as a Senior Resource Representative for Banner Health. I still gig from time to time and have even co-produce a friends 2nd album. My first wife and I divorced some years back because the marriage was getting in the way of our friendship, (yes, you read that right. It was the best thing we could do for each other.) She's back to being my best friend, even to the point of being my Best Man, ahh.... make that WOMAN, at the marriage to my second wife, Rita. They have become very good friends, so I have to keep them apart otherwise they spend the whole time dogging me out. (Why did I ever introduce them? Why? LOL)
Well, that's my story. I guess it's time to get back out there and create new memories before I get too old to remember them. If I'm not hitting the highways on my motorcycle, look me up if you are ever in the Phoenix area and let's get together.
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