A relatively short-lived member of the EMI family, with a Progressive slant. Sovereign was owned by Ben Nisbet, and was launched as the record arm of his newly-formed Big Ben Music publishing company. It had an interesting roster of artists, including Renaissance, Peter Banks, Flash, Juliet Lawson and Public Foot the Roman, but it never achieved the success or the reputation of EMI's own Progressive label, Harvest, and neither its albums nor its singles, which were numbered in the SOV-100s, are met with all that often nowadays. Sovereign operated from early 1972 to mid 1974. It received only a couple of mentions in the Music Press. 'Record Retailer' of the 8th of January 1972 said that Nisbet, previously a director of Feldman Music, had left to start Sovereign Records and a new publishing company, Big Ben Music. Then a fortnight or so later 'RR' of the 22nd added that the company's first release was due out 'on Thursday'.
The label design remained unchanged throughout, apart from a tweak in the perimeter credits: for the very last single the reference to 'The Gramophone Co.' at 9 o'clock was replaced by one to 'EMI Records' at 10 o'clock (2) - thanks to Nicholas Hough for that scan. The same alteration was carried out on most of the other labels in the EMI group, albeit six months or so earlier in most cases - perhaps Sovereign used up existing stock before bringing the new type in. The particular shade of blue that was used varied. Demo copies of the first five singles had a small 'A' and the release date on them (3), while from SOV-106 onwards the usual EMI house style was adopted: the 'A' grew in size and the appropriate text was added (4).
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.