Based in Shipley, NDS issued EPs aimed at the Ballroom Dancing market. It started out as a distribution service for Strict Tempo records, under the name National Dance Services, and moved into the business of making records in 1968, under the proprietorship of George F. Mott. In what seems to be the company's only mention in the Trade press 'Record Retailer' of the 26th of June of that year announced that it was planning to launch its own label in August. According to the article the first record, an EP, would be released on the 23rd and would cost fourteen shillings. It would only be available direct from NDS at The Record Bar, Shipley, but the possibility of wider distribution for future issues was being discussed - the discussion seems to have come to nothing, as NDS continued to play a major role as a distributor both of its own and other companies' records. The article added that NDS specialized in Dance records, many of which it bought up, presumably in bulk, prior to their deletion by the companies which had released them. The initial venture proved successful, and many more NDS EPs followed. They appeared throughout the 1970s and at least into 1980, though the number of releases dwindled over the last three years - there seem to have been none at all in 1979. At some point in or around 1974 the company moved to new premises at 20, Commercial Street.
The first NDS records came with a rather primitive but cheerful-looking label (1, 2) which was only 76mm wide - the norm is c.85mm. In order to indicate the comparatively small size of those labels I've left a large black border around their scans. The company soon changed its name to the rather less ambitious-sounding Northern Dance Services (3) and by the end of 1969 it adopted full-sized labels (4). The logo, which was not far above the spindle hole, rose at some point, and the company's name moved to a different position (5); my copy of BR-12, from 1970, has an old-style label on one side and a new-style one on the other. Re-pressings of the early records had the new-style large labels (1 as 5, 3 as 6) and often had different sleeve designs. The colour scheme was almost always blue-on-white but there were a few exceptions: at least one of the 'Sounds Latin' series had pink-on-white labels (7) - the others in the series may also have done, but I haven't seen any pictured. At some point in 1980 the blue printing turned to black; some earlier records may be found with black-on-white labels, presumably as a result of re-pressings (8)
Numbering of the 45 r.p.m. issues often used the initials of the artist as a prefix: examples shown above are 'BR' for Bill Rayner, 'HE' for Harry Engelman and 'JB' for John Bentley, but many others can be found in the discography below. There was a series of 33 1/3 rpm EPs, which had distinctive labels and were numbered in an 'LLP 33/0' series, 'LLP' standing for 'Little Long Player'; they were sufficiently distinctive for me to give them their own page and discography - see 'NDS 33'. Most NDS EPs seem to have had picture sleeves, but the first had a company sleeve (9) and some had a customized paper one (10). The rubber-stamped sleeves (11, 12) appear to have been used for records distributed by NDS rather than actual NDS issues; I've put examples into them rather than leave them empty - as can be seen from their labels, the company stickered items that they distributed. The card sleeve without credits (13) comes in different colours and would seem to date from c.1976. The earliest pressings had matrix numbers in an 'ES EP 300' series, while later issues have 'AST EP' followed by the catalogue number, in an equally chunky lettering; the style suggests British Homophone pressings (AST, incidentally, was short for 'Astron Productions'). Some records have Pye-style matrix numbers. Many of the recordings were made at Calrec Studios, Hebden Bridge. According to the current guide to Bradford, Northern Dance Services is still in operation today (2006), but it doesn't seem to be still issuing records. The discography below is full of gaps, but I suppose that it is better than nothing. For ease of reference - I suppose there's a remote chance that somebody, somewhere, at some time, may possibly want to refer to the list - the records are arranged alphabetically by prefix rather than chronologically.
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.