LIKE many musically-inclined youth in Jamaica during the late 1960s, Lloyd Parks was a big fan of rocksteady music. His group of choice was The Techniques.
One of reggae’s top bass players, Parks had a stint with the revered vocal group early in his career. He pays tribute to them on his upcoming album, Lloyd Parks Sings The Techniques.
“They’ve always been one of my favourite groups an’ seeing that I’m planning to reinstate my vocal career, I decided to do this album,” Parks said recently during a break from recording sessions at the Mixing Lab studio in Kingston.
Parks, 67, plans to put 10 songs on the set which is scheduled for release in early 2016. They include It’s You I Love (with Big Youth), My Girl, Travelling Man, You Don’t Care and Little did You Know.
The sessions were done with members of his We The People Band.
Parks said while he stayed true to the original arrangements, there was some tweaking to introduce The Techniques to a new generation.
“The colouring is a likkle different ’cause I want to expose what The Techniques have done, to the youths.”
Formed in the early 1960s as a ska group, The Techniques are one of Jamaican music’s great harmony groups. They thrived at producer Arthur ‘Duke’ Reid’s Treasure Isle studio during the rocksteady era late that decade when they were led by quality singers like Keith ‘Slim’ Smith, Pat Kelly and Johnny Johnson.
Parks, Kelly and Johnson comprised The Techniques when they re-formed in the 1990s, a period of rocksteady renaissance.
Prior to forming We The People, Parks sang in a vocal group called The Termites. He also played in bands like Skin, Flesh and Bones and briefly, The Revolutionaries, house band at Channel One studio.
While establishing himself as a session musician in the early 1970s, Parks recorded hit songs like Slaving and Officially.
— By Howard Campbell
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