Lloyd Deslandes Singer, Songwriter, Producer, Label Owner

In April, 1969 Lloyd Deslandes produced four songs at Studio One with engineer Sylvan Morris.

The musicians were the Hippy Boys. Lloyd recalls these musicians: "Familyman on bass and Carly Barrett on drums, Ranny Bop Williams on lead guitar,

"Jacko" Jackson Jones on rhythm guitar, Nathan Breckenridge on trumpet, Oswald

Nethersole on keyboard."   Lloyd himself was playing tenor sax. Lloyd didn't have a name for one of the two instrumentals so Sylvan Morris came up with "Death Rides A Horse," named after a 1967 spaghetti western,

probably the first of three songs that received the same title in Jamaica within a short time.

The four songs were: Lloyd And The Mellotones - Lover Come Back, Barry Bailey - I Am Lonely,

The Hippy Boys - Bangalang Shangalang, and The Hippy Boys - Death Rides A Horse.

After that session Lloyd had to attend soldiers training camp in Newcastle, Jamaica, where he  was playing saxophone in the army band.  He wasn’t in a position to release these songs on

vinyl, so he gave Jacko, a good friend of his, the money to press these records at Dynamic

Sounds. The songs were released on two Jamaican pre-release blank label 7"s, in a very small run. Then Jacko went on tour to Canada and the tapes of these four songs landed in different

people’s hands, and somehow the song names and artist credits got mixed up.

Lloyd never saw or heard of any of the four records, and saw no royalties until this, the first  licensed release.

What was originally "Lloyd And The Mellotones - Lover Come Back" was released in England on the Grape label (Grape 3006) as by Winston Groovy.  (Wikipedia has it wrong.)

"Barry Bailey - I Am Lonely" was released in England on Grape 3008 credited to Winston  Groovy again.

"The Hippy Boys - Death Rides A Horse" wasn't released in England as far as we know.

"The Hippy Boys - Bangalang Shangalang" was released in England on Amalgamated 850,  there wrongly credited as "Death Rides A Horse," and later released on several Trojan samplers,

CD and LP, always with the wrong song title and always with no permission of the owner.

Reggae history is full of miscredit and mix-up business, but Lloyd Deslandes got hit really hard. Just a few years ago Kingston Sounds label released a full CD/LP as "The Viceroys - Ghetto  Vibes." Out of 14 tracks, 13 are not the Viceroys at all, but Lloyd Deslandes himself, who sang and produced them. When he provided the studio with tapes from which to make a commercial  CD, someone must have copied the songs, for how they ended up at Kingston Sounds is unclear. One of these songs is "Lloyd Deslandes - Unity (Live Fe Come See)"