A small independent company, run by producer Ian Grant and based in Atney Road, London. 'Music Week' of the 25th of June 1977 says that Standfast had signed to Shannon (q.v.) for distribution and that it had two discrete prefixes for its catalogue numbers, 'PINE' for Country and 'CONE' for folk. However, CONE-1215-S was a 1978 Country single by Lorne Gibson, 'Shadows Of Her Mind' b/w 'For The Life Of A Song', and the only PINEs that googling dredges up are a couple of Irish Folk LPs and the EP by None Such Green shown above (which features 'I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing' and 'Home To Rusthall' on the reverse), so perhaps 'MW' may have got that back to front. Standfast had already been on the scene for a number of years at that point: PINE-1212, an album by Le Cheile called 'Lord Mayo', dates from 1975, and a 1974 LP 'Music and Songs From The 6th National Scout & Guides Festival of Folk Music' (FF-1-6) while not on the Standfast label has a credit to the Standfast Music Company. The only other Standfast 7" that I have been able to track down was a three-track effort from 1983 featuring snooker player Ray Reardon, 'It's Snooker Again' b/w an instrumental version by Brass Standfast and a track by Dale Mitchell Humphries, 'The Night I Played Ray Reardon' (CONE-1216). Its label was of the same design as the one above but was yellow. According to the 'MW' article Ian Grant had formed Steadfast because it gave him complete control as a producer. He had produced several Country albums for both The Hillsiders and Pete Sayers in the '70s, so he had experience in that particular field.
Copyright 2016 Robert Lyons.