The aftermath of his work on "Smile" and "Song Cycle" left Parks wanting to focus more behind-the-scenes and with lesser-known artists, such as Randy Newman and Ry Cooder, and expressed discontent with being "typecast" by his songs. The 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill was also life-altering for Parks and changed his "very reason for being". Sometime after, he met the Esso Trinidad Steel Band, a Trinidadian calypso band who had been performing with Liberace in Las Vegas. According to Parks, "I saw them as enslaved in their relationship to Liberace; I thought it was a vulgarity. I wanted to save them from their trivialization." What had begun as Parks's desire to popularize calypso at that point became his focal point, and he would work with the steel band the next several years. Speaking about his life then, Parks stated, "My favorite group was the Esso Trinidad Steel Band, whom I worked with. I loved calypso all my life. I knew every Trinidadian in Hermosa Beach back then, there were probably about 20 families. Now there's a huge population."