Sandy Roberton

Alexander William "Sandy" Roberton (7 July 1942 – 25 July 2022) was a British record producer and music business owner whose 60-year career spanned record production, artist management, record label ownership, and producer management.

Roberton was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on 7 July 1942.

When he was six years old, his parents emigrated to Africa.

His father, Robert, was a tractor technician involved in the British Government's post-war Tanganyika Groundnut Scheme in East Africa.

In consequence, he was raised firstly in Tanganyika (now Tanzania), and latterly in Kenya, where as a teenager he had his first taste of the local music scene in a group called Les Hombres.

After a brief early career as a recording artist in the mid-1960s, Robertson moved into music publishing, running Chess Records' London offices and promoting the songs from their music publishing companies, Arc, Regent and Jewel.

With record producer Mike Vernon, he helped set up the publishing for the Blue Horizon record label during the British blues boom that saw acts like John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Chicken Shack and Fleetwood Mac achieve success.

Intent on a career in the burgeoning music business of the early 1960s, Roberton moved to London in 1963.

By day he took jobs at Olivetti typewriters and the department store C&A to earn enough money to exist, whilst nights were spent fashioning his singing career.

He began playing in a venue called the Dive Bar at the King's Head pub in Soho, frequently joined on stage by his old school bandmate Rick Tykiff.

The label became synonymous with the cream of British blues in the late 1960s, releasing music by Chicken Shack, Duster Bennett, Christine Perfect (later Christine McVie) and Fleetwood Mac, including their eponymously named 1968 debut album.

The pair were soon signed up to a record deal by record producer Tom Springfield (brother of singer Dusty Springfield) and, as Rick and Sandy, recorded several singles in 1965 for the Decca and Mercury labels, including "Half as Much", "I Remember Baby" and "Lost My Girl".

Both of the latter two songs were produced and arranged by songwriter Les Reed who would later become well known as the writer of several hits for Tom Jones including "It's Not Unusual" and "Delilah".

It would lead to Roberton leaving Chappell to team up with Vernon and his brother Richard at Blue Horizon, a specialist blues label that Mike Vernon had started with childhood friend Neil Slaven in 1965.

Together, they set up two Blue Horizon music publishing companies, Goodie Two Shoes Music and Uncle Doris Music.

After Rick Tykiff decided to leave the music business, Roberton had a solo single released on Columbia in 1966 under the name Sandy, a cover of Neil Diamond's 'Solitary Man'; and, backed by a group called Fleur De Lys, his version of the Bob Dylan song, 'Baby You've Been On My Mind' was released on Polydor in 1967 under the name Lucien Alexander.

By the time of that release, however, Roberton was already working in music publishing, running the London office of Chess Records' publishing companies Arc Music, Regent Music and Jewel Music through the offices of music publishers Chappell & Co. at 52 Maddox Street in Mayfair.

Their writers, amongst others, included such Blues greats as Jimmy Reed, John Lee Hooker, Willie Dixon, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, and Bo Diddley.

He also ran the London office of Bill Lowery's company Lowery Music, whose writers included Joe South, Tommy Roe, Mac Davis, and Billy Joe Royal.

Roberton's job consisted mostly of convincing UK artists to record songs from the catalogs of these companies.

Georgie Fame's cover of Billy Stewart's 'Sitting In The Park', which got to #12 in the UK music charts in December 1966, was one of his main achievements, and the Jewel Music song 'It Ain't Right' by Little Walter, was one of several Blues covers on John Mayall's seminal 1966 album Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton, also colloquially known as 'The Beano Album' from its cover picture.

That album resulted in a life-long connection between Roberton and its producer, Mike Vernon.

In 1967, Roberton moved into music production for the first time, producing two singles by The Chocolate Watch Band, an English band featuring Gary Osborne, who would later go on to write several hits for Elton John in the early 1980s.

In 1968 he established his own record production and artist management company, September Productions, and became one of the leading lights of the folk rock era of the 1970s, managing and producing bands such as The Liverpool Scene, Steeleye Span and Plainsong.

Sandy Roberton formed his own music production and artist management company in 1968, calling it September Productions Ltd. after the month in which it was formed.

One of the first artists to sign up with him was The Liverpool Scene, the poetry and music collective from Liverpool featuring poet Adrian Henri and guitarist Andy Roberts, together with Mike Evans, Mike Hart, Percy Jones and Brian Dodson.

Roberton co-produced their first album, Amazing Adventures of, along with DJ John Peel who had championed their music on his BBC radio shows.

In the space of just two years under Roberton's management, Liverpool Scene would release four albums via a deal he struck with record label RCA to supply them with albums by artists he now managed; play on the same day as Bob Dylan at the 1969 Isle of Wight Festival in front of some 150,000 music fans; tour on a three-act bill with Blodwyn Pig and Led Zeppelin which included playing at the Royal Albert Hall; and break up in May 1970 in the wake of a somewhat financially disastrous US tour.

A first solo album by Andy Roberts, Home Grown, produced by Roberton and recorded during Roberts' latter days with Liverpool Scene, was released on RCA in March 1970.

A second album, Everyone, by Roberts' post-Liverpool Scene band Everyone, was released on the B & C record label in 1971 in a deal Roberton negotiated when the RCA relationship came to an end.

By the time the Everyone album was released, however, the band itself was no longer in existence, and both Roberton and Roberts had already begun working with singer Iain Matthews whose debut solo LP, If You Saw Thro' My Eyes, was released in May 1971, the first of a three-album deal with Vertigo Records.

He would be brought in as producer at Andy Roberts' suggestion when the original producer, Paul Samwell-Smith, began to not turn up to recording sessions, though he remained uncredited on the album's label and artwork.

It was the beginning of a long relationship with Matthews that would see him produce the third album of the Vertigo deal, Journeys From Gospel Oak (recorded in November 1972 but not released until 1974), and four more Matthews solo albums in the late 1970s and early 1980s when he formed his own record label, Rockburgh Records.

In 1977, he established his own record label, Rockburgh Records, releasing some 40 albums and singles by various artists, including four solo albums by singer Iain Matthews, formerly of Fairport Convention and Matthews Southern Comfort.

In 1980, Robertson moved into producer management, establishing his Worlds End Management company in London, which claimed to be the first of its kind to represent the interests of producers, mixers, and sound engineers.

He is also credited with establishing the 'points' system, whereby his clients would receive royalties for the work they did on producing artists' records.

He moved its base to Los Angeles in 1985, becoming a US citizen in 2004, and ran his business there until his death, along the way founding two more record labels in the 2000s, Beverly Martel and IAMSOUND.

Over the course of four decades, Worlds End became the leading management company in its field, with over 75 producers on its books during the 1990s and early 2000s.

Roberton died in London, aged 80, on July 25, 2022, from cancer.

Talking with journalist Dave Thompson in Goldmine magazine in November 2013, Roberton said, "I had an arrangement with RCA and was taking most of my September Productions acts to them. When that relationship finished, I was approached by Lee Gopthal who was the co-owner of Trojan Records, saying he wanted to get into different areas of music. He'd started B & C and was distributing Charisma Records, but he wanted to sign his own acts. I started signing, producing, and releasing through B & C."