Something of a mystery. Stentor may have been a custom recording concern or a DIY label, based in the Southend area; though there's another possibility - see below. The catalogue number of an EP of songs called 'The Country Code', SR-2061, suggests that there ought to be lots of Stentor records out there, but googling has drawn a complete blank. It seems unlikely that dozens of records would disappear without trace, which leaves me wondering if perhaps the numbering may have started - and ended? - at 2061 for some reason. 'The Country Code' contained seven items written by Betty Goddard, music teacher and deputy headmistress at the Westcliff High School for Girls, and recorded by the school choir. There's no date on the EP, but intensive research (!) has revealed that two of the instrumentalists credited on the sleeve were at the school from 1973 to 1978, which gives us the range of possible years and allows us to pin the record down to our decade. In addition to the titles shown on the scan the EP offered 'Woodland Song', 'Fire Song', 'Echo Song', and 'Finale'. The roughness of the centre of the label suggests a British Homophone pressing, which the style of the matrix number doesn't actually contradict, but that's only a possibility not a certainty. If you know of any other Stentor records, 7" or 12", I'd be pleased to hear from you.
Tantalizingly there were a few mentions of a company called Stentor in the 1970s' music press. 'Record Retailer' of the 12th of February 1972 carried a report about a company of that name which was based at 118 New Bond Street, London, and had made its first recording the previous week. The directors were chairman John Simco Harrison, secretary Geraldine Harrison, conductor Wyn Morris, and recording engineers Malcolm Henderson, Bob Auger and Des Norman. Isabella Wallich, of Delysé Records, had been associated with the new enterprise but had left before the company had been formed. 'Billboard' of the 29th of April added that the first recording was Rachmaninov's 'Vespers For Unaccompanied Choir' by the Bruckner-Mahler Choir under Wyn Morris, and said that a new version of the completion of Mahler's Symphony No. 10 by musicologist Deryck Cooke was planned for later in the year. John Simco Harrison is quoted as saying that the company planned to make both Pop and Classical recordings, the latter mainly of works that had not been "overdone by other companies." Whatever the plans were, they seem to have changed drastically: there's no sign of either of the recordings - or of any others - on a Stentor label. In October 1972, however, Morris joined Isabella Wallich and businessman John Raffael in a new venture, Independent World Releases, which (according to the article) planned to license its recordings to other companies - it later started its own label, which evolved into 'Symphonica'. LPs of the Rachmaninov and Mahler works appeared over the next couple of years in the Netherlands, on the Philips label: Morris was the conductor on both, and Auger the engineer, and the Bruckner-Mahler Choir and Deryck Cooke were involved respectively, which suggests that these may well have been the Stentor recordings - perhaps they had been acquired by I.W.R., and Stentor had ceased to function? Sadly I haven't managed to find a link between that Stentor and this one, but an Independent World album of Mahler's symphony No.5, issued in 1975, has matrix numbers A-2027 and A-2028, which aren't a million miles away from the SR-2061 of the 'Country Code' EP....
Copyright 2015 Robert Lyons.