PLANTETONE & SWAY RECORDS
Difficulty in obtaining music from Jamaica led Sonny Roberts to open his own recording studio.
In 1961 he established the 1st Black owned recording studio in Britain., Planetone Studios at 108 Cambridge Road, Kilburn, London NW6
Describe your image
Describe your image
Describe your image
Describe your image
Sonny pictured in his Planetone Recording Studio in 1961, (standing in the recording booth) at 108 Cambridge Road, Kilburn, London NW6.
Notable artists who recorded and did sessions at Planetone Recording Studios
(photos of different artists)
Describe your image
Describe your image
Describe your image
Describe your image
Record labels owned by Sonny Roberts in the early 1960s
Millie Small singer of the song ‘My Boy Lollipop’, rehearsed this hit record at Planetone Studios with Tony Washington on the piano and Ernest Ranglin on guitar. She was signed to Island Records.
Lee Gopthal was born in Constant Spring, Jamaica, into a family of Indian origin. His father, Sikarum Gopthal, came to Britain on the Empire Windrush in 1948, and Lee moved to Britain in 1952. Lee a young accountant at the time, bought a property in Kilburn in the late 1950s’, part of which he leased to record producer Sonny Roberts.
Roberts’ initial approach was rebuffed, but the timely arrival of a mutual friend from the Indian-Jamaican community swayed the Gopthals, and Sonny opened his one-track studio in the basement.
Lee Gopthal
RICO RODRIGUEZ
Trombonist Rico Rodriguez was a mainstay of the early Planetone releases. In 1962, Sonny recorded the first single on the Planetone label - ‘Midnight In Ethiopia’ and he also recorded seven other songs on the Planetone label with Rico.
Other artistes followed, such as Owen Gray, Ernest Ranglin, Tony Washington and Jackie Edwards swapping piano duties; the Marvels and Tito Simone all featured on vocal sides.
Chris Blackwell
In the close-knit Jamaican immigrant community, it was perhaps inevitable that Chris Blackwell and Sonny Roberts would cross paths, once Blackwell moved to London. Roberts says they first met when he did some carpentry work at Blackwell’s original office space in the West End – Connaught Square, London W2; due to their mutual love of music, a great friendship was struck. Roberts recalls that Blackwell was experiencing problems with his landlord, since too many black Jamaican musicians were turning up at the space. Sonny thus helped and arranged for Blackwell to move Island’s London HQ to an upstairs room at 108 Cambridge Road, Kilburn. Blackwell began making use of Roberts’ studio, rehearsing Millie Small in the space with the guitarist Ernest Ranglin also they supported each others' projects in the music business, most significantly in the 1960s and 1970s.
By 1968 Blackwell persuaded Leichman Gopthal to quit his day-job and set up Trojan Records. Blackwell would soon form a short-lived partnership with Leichman (Lee) Gopthal, who would shortly take over the Trojan label they jointly operated.
Chris Blackwell founder of Island Records
A quote from Chris Blackwell's biography (published in 2022) The Islander - My Life In Music and Beyond:
"Another label targeting British West Indians called Planetone had been set up in 1961 by a tall, slim, very gentle Jamaican carpenter, Clinton ‘Sonny’ Roberts, who'd arrived in the UK as a twenty-six-year-old in 1958, and his friend and fellow enthusiast Lloyd Harvey. Inspired by the Busters and Dodds, Roberts didn't want to merely import and sell Jamaican records; he wanted to record them. With homegrown enterprise, he got hold of a one-track recorder and some disc-cutting equipment and set up a makeshift studio in his flat off the Edgware Road."
Planetone and Island Records were both located at 108 Cambridge Road, London NW6
Bob Bell
A quote from Bob Bell's Tribute To Sonny Roberts:
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. This was the very first black-owned studio in the UK. 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.
​
https://www.martinhespfoodandtravel.com/hespfoodandtravelhome/bob-bell-pays-tribute-to-sonny-roberts
Bob Bell started working at Island Records in 1965. By the end of the Sixties, he left Island and joined the company’s partnership with B & C, Trojan Records.