Bob Bell Pays Tribute to Sonny Roberts
The death of 89-year-old Sonny Roberts in St. Andrews, Jamaica, on March 17th, from cancer, left not only the music world a lesser place, but humanity too. Sonny was not just a pioneering Jamaican who blazed cultural trails in postwar Britain, he was a sweet and gentle man who enriched the lives of all who met him.
(Photos courtesy Cleon Roberts' - Cleon is Sonny’s daughter).
He was born in Spice Grove, Manchester Parish, Jamaica in 1932, and emigrated to the UK in 1958.
In 1963, Chris Blackwell had been using his house in Connaught Square, a building leased from the Anglican Church, as the office for his fledgling Island Records, but as eviction loomed - he had rented the house as a single-family home but had ten people of ‘various genders, shades and colours living there’ - he needed a new base for Island. Chris knew Sonny Roberts who, in his capacity as a carpenter, had been doing some work for him, and Sonny put Chris and David Betteridge in touch with Lee Gopthal, another immigrant from Jamaica who owned property at 108 Cambridge Road, Kilburn, London, NW6, ( and ran his newly started record business B & C from the premises) and from whom Sonny rented the basement which he had converted into a recording studio, and where he recorded Jamaican artists such as Mike Elliott, The Marvels, recent arrival Rico Rodriguez, Robert ‘Dandy Livingstone’ Thompson and Tito ‘Sugar’ Simone. This was the very first black-owned studio in the UK, and Sonny issued the records on his Planetone and Sway labels, the first black-owned record company in the UK. Many of his early productions were sold as one-off acetates to London sound systems, but he started selling his records, and those of other artists and labels, at his Orbitone Record shop, on the floor above the studio. It was the first black-owned record store in the UK., and it was this space that he was planning to relinquish and turn over to Island Records.
Chris and David came to an agreement with Lee and rented the first floor, which had been Orbitone Records, and soon realised they needed more space to store the records in, and with Sonny’s blessing, took over the basement.
Sonny’s role in putting Chris Blackwell, David Betteridge and Lee Gopthal together was beyond propitious … the reverberations continue today, nearly sixty years hence. Life is full of roads taken and not taken, opportunities grasped and missed, what-if’s and what-if not’s. All conjecture and speculation aside, it is an incontrovertible fact that had Sonny not affected these introductions, Trojan Records would not have come into existence. And had that not happened, the popularity and evolution of Jamaican music most likely would have taken a different route.
So let there be no mistake. Sonny Roberts was not just a trailblazer in his own right, with the studio, record labels and retail outlets, he was a major catalyst in the story of Jamaican music, and its flowering throughout the world.
I first met him not long after I started work at Island Records in 1965. Indeed my place of employment was his former Planetone Studio, down in the basement of Cambridge Road, Kilburn, then being used as the stores for the company Chris Blackwell had started in the UK in 1962.
By the time I arrived in 1965, Sonny had left the studio, and the first floor. All that remained of the studio was the control room - by then, it had become the stores office with its glass window looking out into the stores and rows of racks of records - and the dozens of egg boxes, glued to the walls and ceiling in an effort to deaden the sound of the erstwhile studio.
Among the labels Island distributed were Sonny’s Planetone and Sway imprints, and Sonny would call into the offices now and then, to check on stock, and we became friendly. A tall slim man, with Somalian or Ethiopian features - although I really have no idea of his ancestor’s origins - he had come to the UK in 1958 from Jamaica and worked as a carpenter, but his real love in life was music. Sonny and I never talked about his closing down the studio, but I got the feeling from him that its demise was not necessarily a bad thing. He moved his retail operation to Harlesden, where it remained for many years.
When Island and B & C left Cambridge Road, and moved to Music House, 12 Neasden Lane in Willesden, forming Trojan Records as they did so. Sonny was still part of the scene. Indeed, Trojan released some of his productions on its Tabernacle, Blue Cat and Explosion labels, and in the seventies Sonny revived his Orbitone label, and made several very successful recordings, such as those by Tim Chandell, afro-jazz by such as Peter King and Nkengas, and also launched subsidiary labels such as Tackle, a label popular with emigres from Antigua, Barbados and Trinidad, featuring spouge artists such as Roy Alton, The Senators and Kalabash, Affection, which featured lovers rock by such as Bridie Stewart and Silver, and later Cartridge, releasing cuts by his old friend Dandy Livingstone. His biggest year was 1986 when Orbitone’s Judy Boucher hit number two in the national charts with ‘Can’t Be With You Tonight’.
I visited him at his Harlesden shop on several occasions in the late Seventies, or during the Eighties on the rare times I was able to visit London during short trips from my new home in the USA. He always greeted me like a long-lost friend, and we spent many memorable hours talking music, listening to his latest records, and generally catching up.
He returned to Jamaica in 1997, to St. Andrew Parish, where he and his family ran a company producing natural colouring and seasoning products. He also produced ’Sonny’s All Natural Mosquito & Insect Bite Relief’ which is the very best product I have ever encountered for insect bites. I learned this when my wife and I visited Jamaica in 2016 and Chris Blackwell turned us onto the salve, which Chris sold in the shops in his resorts. During that visit I mentioned to Dandy Livingstone, who graciously hosted us on a couple of trips around the Island, that I would love to talk with Sonny, and did Dandy have his contact info? To my great joy, the following day at Chris’ Strawberry Hills resort there was a phone call from Sonny. It had probably been twenty-five years since we had spoken. It was a bitter-sweet moment. He had recently had surgery for throat cancer, and used a voice box, and was difficult to understand, but with the help of his wife, we were able to catch up once again. Sonny was recognised for his contributions when he received a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Jamaica Observer in 2019. He is survived by his wife Monica, three children, several grandchildren, a sister, and a brother.
Sonny was that rare person in the music business, fair, honest, trustworthy. David Betteridge, former Managing Director of Island, remembered him as ‘delightful to work with, a thoroughly nice man, very trustworthy - an extremely decent human being’.
I can think of no finer nor more fitting description.
