A long-lived Soul / Reggae label, owned by Sonny Roberts. Orbitone started life as a record shop. It appears to have begun issuing its own records in 1972 and it filled its market niche effectively but quietly until 1987, when a couple of singles by Judy Boucher at last took it into the Singles Chart; 'Can't Be With You Tonight' (OR 7-21) did particularly well, reaching the No.2 spot. The colours of the label varied, as did the design on occasions; genrally they what appear to be land masses on them, but there were occasional pressings with plain labels (2). Catalogue numbers varied also: what seems to have been the first Orbitone single, B. Lynch's 'Lonesome Road' was numbered HI-001; HI-002 seems only to exist as a white labelled promo. 1973 saw the Vaughns' 'Vaya Con Dios' given the number TAK-007; other numbers in that series were used later by the Tackle label (q.v.), a subsidiary of Orbitone. There was also an ORB-001, Sonny Roberts's 'Instruction 1'. Subsequent issues were numbered in the OT-000s; early on, singles and LPs alike shared this numbering, though LPs soon gained their own 'OTLP'-prefixed numbers. In 1978 the OT-000 series was replaced by an ORB-00 one (7). In the early '80s Orbitone seems to have concentrated on 12" singles, as did many other Reggae companies. Thanks to John Timmis for the third scan, and to Robert Bowes who supplied all of the other scans except the first and the sixth. The discography below is very gappy and only covers the 1970s.
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.