PIONEERING UK-BASED RECORD PRODUCER SONNY ROBERTS, DIES AT 89!

Sonny Roberts—

BY HOWARD CAMPBELL— Observer senior writer—

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SONNY Roberts, the music producer/record store owner who died on March 17 at his St Andrew home, belonged to a generation of West Indians who helped transform the United Kingdom.

Roberts, who was 89, succumbed to complications of throat cancer. The first black man to operate a recording studio in the UK, he is synonymous there with his Planetone and Orbitone labels.

He was a contemporary of other Jamaican music pioneers in that country such as Lee Gopthal, co-founder of Trojan Records, and sound system giant Count Shelly.

“These men were courageous to step out and start something. Many people who went to England back then were looking for work; they wanted to start things,” said Anthony “Chips” Richards, a British music industry veteran who knew Roberts for almost 50 years.

‘Back then’, in Roberts’ case, was 1958. He arrived in the UK from Spice Grove district in Manchester, during a period of mass migration from the Caribbean.

A carpenter by trade, it was not long before he got immersed in the burgeoning West Indian music scene in London, which was dominated by ska music from Jamaica.

While he was Gopthal’s tenant at 108 Cambridge Road in London, Roberts built a recording studio in the basement where he produced songs by artistes including trombonist Rico Rodriguez for the fledgling Planetone.

It was with Orbitone, however, that he made his biggest impact in the 1970s. He cut several ground-breaking songs with a Nigerian Afrobeat band called The Nkengas. The label scored with easy-listening reggae songs like Can’t be With You Tonight by Judy Boucher, a singer from St Vincent and the Grenadines.

Orbitone also made its name by distributing early soca music worldwide in the 1980s when that genre replaced calypso as the sound of choice from the Eastern Caribbean.

He returned to Jamaica in 1999.

Sonny Roberts, who was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Jamaica Observer in 2019, is survived by his wife Monica, three children, several grandchildren, a sister and brother.