The Kingstonians
Band. Rocksteady, reggae
- Active
- 1966-1970s
- Also known as
- Kingstonians
The Kingstonians were a vocal trio, Jackie Bernard, his brother Lloyd "Footy" Bernard and their friend Lloyd Kerr, whose records for Derrick Harriott at the turn of the 1970s gave the "sufferer" song one of its defining titles.
They started in the rocksteady years with J.J. Johnson, the jukebox distributor turned producer, for whom they cut "Winey Winey" in 1967. Their best years came between 1968 and 1970 with Harriott, who produced "Singer Man," "Sufferer," "Good Ambition" and "Hold Down" and issued their one album, Sufferer (1970). Bradley hears the trio at their absolute peak on "Sufferer" and "Singer Man," which, unusually, were loved by black and white audiences alike when Harriott's labels released them in Britain, where "Sufferah" was one of the big sellers of the skinhead reggae market.
Harriott later pointed to "Sufferer" as the moment the ghetto's patience gave out: "These were sung by guys who just want to proclaim how they feel it so bad," he said, and the singers who came to him "were really suffering."
Jackie Bernard, the lead singer, fell on hard times in old age, and a fund was raised for him in 2014. He departed at Kingston Public Hospital in September 2014, after being admitted with chest pains; the cause was reported to be complications of pneumonia.
Last updated October 6, 2026
Connections
- Derrick Harriott (producer)
Notes
- "Jackie Bernard of the Kingstonians Is Dead," Jamaica Gleaner, September 17, 2014, https://past.jamaica-gleaner.com/article/entertainment/20140917/jackie-bernard-kingstonians-dead. Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 283.
- Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 56, 81. The single is dated 1967 on Discogs. "The Kingstonians: Winey Winey / I Don't Care," Discogs, accessed October 6, 2026, https://www.discogs.com/release/1521839-The-Kingstonians-Winey-Winey-I-Dont-Care.
- "Jackie Bernard of the Kingstonians Is Dead." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 83. The album is dated 1970 on Discogs. "The Kingstonians: Sufferer," Discogs, accessed October 6, 2026, https://www.discogs.com/release/14601971-The-Kingstonians-Sufferer.
- Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 225 ("from that trio at their absolute peak"), 242, 245 ("equally revered by both black and white audiences").
- Harriott, interviewed in Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 283, where Bradley dates the single to 1970.
- "Jackie Bernard of the Kingstonians Is Dead."
