Starlite was founded by Carlo Krahmer, owner of Jazz label Esquire. It put its first records out at the start of 1958 and for the next five years or so served as an outlet for popular music of various kinds: Ceilidh, Strict Tempo and Rock 'n' Roll records rubbed shoulders together in the Starlite listings, as indeed did Ska records licensed from Chris Blackwell's Island label, at that time based in Jamaica. Until the end of 1963 singles were numbered in the ST-45-100s, the numbers reaching at least ST-45-108. There was also an ST-EP-0 series, for EPs. Labels came in various shades of rich reddish-purple; at first printing was in gold (2), but silver printing was introduced in the Spring of 1961 (1). At some point in or around 1964 the SE-EP-0 series was replaced by a new GRK-500 one, and the label colour changed to light blue with black printing (3); no more singles were issued. A mid-blue label (4) was used briefly c.1971, for GRKs 529 to 534. From April 1967 Starlite's only releases were in the form of Strict Tempo EPs by Norman Grant, the last of which came out in late 1972 or possibly early 1973. Pressing of these EPs appears to have been mainly by Orlake and British Homophone. In 1977, however, a couple of the company's old Rock 'n' Roll records were licensed from Esquire by the Vintage Record Centre of London and reissued with their original catalogue numbers. At least one more reissue followed, in 1978 (6). Thanks to Robert Bowes for bringing that third reissue to my attention and for providing the scan. By and large Starlites seem to have had no dates on their labels, though the final eight issues gained one (5). The Fabulous Table Toppers' single shown above dates from 1962; the first three EPs are from 1959, 1968 and 1971 respectively. The discography below only covers 1970s reissues and records from the GRK-500 series.
(Paul Pelletier: Record Information Services, issues 15 and 16)
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.