Ovation hailed from Nottingham. To judge by the half dozen or so of its records that I've seen listed it appears to have been a custom recording organisation rather than the kind of company which signs artists and then issues records by them. Albums were numbered in the MB-2000s; the catalogue number of one of the only two 7" Ovation records I've seen, Bob Rowe's 'Command Hits Vol. 1' (MBS-2026), looks as though it ought to belong in that series, but there was an LP numbered 2026 as well. The other 7", an EP by Terry Mundy, was numbered K-7777, which doesn't fit into any series that I've come across. The earliest Ovation product that googling reveals, Billy Street's 'On The Sunny Side' LP (MB-2025), dates from 1978, though the catalogue number suggests that there should be others; Ovation continued to make records until at least 1981. As well as making his own EP Bob Rowe produced the majority of the LPs, which suggests that he may well have been behind the company. He worked as a broadcaster on Radio Nottingham, and moved on to the field of photography, having a book published by Ovation Productions in 1999; the name of that publisher lends weight to the theory that Ovation was his. Those of the company's records I've managed to trace are listed below - they're mostly albums, but I thought they might be of interest. The only three that I have seen in the vinyl have been pressed by Sound Manufacturing, of Hayes, Middlesex. There was another Ovation label, which operated rather briefly from 1980 and was distributed by Pye; that company was of American derivation, and had nothing to do with the Nottingham one. See also Cherub Music.
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.