Lloyd Parks
Artist. Rocksteady, reggae, dub
- Active
- 1960s-present
- Sunrise
- 1948, Kingston
- Also known as
- Lloyd Parkes, Noel Lloyd Parks, Lloyd Parks and We the People, We the People Band, Skin, Flesh and Bones
Lloyd Parks, born in Kingston in 1948, is a bass player, singer and bandleader: a session bassist on hundreds of 1970s records, the singer of "Officially" and "Mafia," and for fifty years the leader of We the People Band.
He first recorded at Studio One in the vocal duo the Termites, which the Rough Guide remembers chiefly for launching his career, and he sang with the Techniques in one of their later lineups. He came to the bass by chance, when a bassist missed a job at the Stables club ("If I can play six strings I must be able to play four strings!"), and found, he said, that "I had a unique style"; radio deejays began naming him on air. As a bassist he played for Lloyd Charmers, Bunny Lee's Aggrovators and Joe Gibbs, whose studio band often used him in place of Robbie Shakespeare; on the guitarist Willie Lindo's 1974 album the Rough Guide calls him "the best bass player in Jamaica." He and Sly Dunbar played together in the Skin, Flesh and Bones band at the Tit for Tat club on Red Hills Road, and the two were often the rhythm section on London lovers rock sessions too.
As a singer he had hits with "Slaving," built with Glen Brown, the title track of his album Officially (1973) and Mafia (1975), which Snuffy and Wally versioned for Joe Gibbs. Errol Thompson's 1973 dub of his "Ordinary Man" on Clive Chin was among the early experiments in mixing.
When Skin, Flesh and Bones broke up he formed We the People Band in 1975, with Franklyn "Bubbler" Waul, Dean Fraser and others; it became one of Jamaica's leading backing bands, and Parks was Dennis Brown's musical director for the better part of two decades. Brown, he said, called him his credit card: "don't leave home without him." He was honored at Reggae Sumfest in 2025 for fifty years as a bandleader.
Last updated November 5, 2026
Connections
- Sly Dunbar (bandmate)
- Dennis Brown (backed)
- Ossie Hibbert (bandmate)
- The Techniques (band)
- Dean Fraser (bandmate)
- Coxsone Dodd (first producer)
- Errol Thompson (engineer)
- Clive Chin (producer)
- Bunny "Striker" Lee (session work)
- Joe Gibbs (session work)
- Glen Brown (collaborator)
- Lloyd Charmers (collaborator)
- Prince Tony Robinson (session work)
Notes
- "We the People: A Roll Call of Musicians," Jamaica Gleaner, January 5, 2019, https://past.jamaica-gleaner.com/article/entertainment/20190105/we-people-roll-call-musicians. Bradley lists "Lloyd Parkes (bass)" among the Aggrovators. Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 349. Birth year from "Lloyd Parks," Discogs, accessed October 6, 2026, https://www.discogs.com/artist/171292-Lloyd-Parks.
- Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 65, 72, 74.
- Angus Taylor, "Interview: Lloyd Parks in Kingston (Part 1)," United Reggae, May 3, 2017, https://unitedreggae.com/articles/n2194/050317/interview-lloyd-parks-in-kingston-part-1.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 115, 116, 153, 229, 230.
- "We the People: A Roll Call of Musicians." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 157; Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 446.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 119, 161, 170 ("the original rhythms from Parks/Glen Brown"). Officially is dated 1973 and the "Mafia" single 1975 on Discogs. "Lloyd Parks: Officially," Discogs, accessed October 6, 2026, https://www.discogs.com/release/5423312-Lloyd-Parks-Officially; "Llod Parks / Black Expression Band: Mafia / Parks," Discogs, accessed October 6, 2026, https://www.discogs.com/release/722080-Llod-Parks-Black-Expression-Band-Mafia-Parks.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 223.
- "We the People: A Roll Call of Musicians."
- "Lloyd Parks Grateful as He Celebrates 50 Years in Music," Jamaica Gleaner, July 30, 2025, https://past.jamaica-gleaner.com/article/entertainment/20250730/lloyd-parks-grateful-he-celebrates-50-years-music.
