The first, and by far the most prolific, of the two Silver Dollar companies to be operative in the '70s was a London-based Strict Tempo Music label. It issued its first records in or around 1959. Its 7" products were EPs, and they were nearly all by bands led by Ernest Wilson, the man behind the label. Composer, arranger and pianist Wilson had worked with some big names, such as Victor Silvester, but towards the end of the '50s he decided to set out on his own, and Silver Dollar was the result. Numbering started off at SD-139, with 'Dancing Time No. 1', and continued for a while in an odd way, with the first number rather than the last changing - the second issue, 'Dancing Time No. 2', was SD-239, and so on. This altered after ten issues, with the '39' moving to the front; thus the eleventh was numbered SD-3911. From then on the numbering remained the same for much of the time, though for Dancing Times Nos. 26 to 29 inclusive it appears to have switched to SDX-x399, with the first number changing - that is speculative, as I've only managed to track down No.27, which was numbered SDX-7399. There were also variations in the prefix, which became 'SDX' in 1964. An 'SDV' prefix indicated that the EP had vocals on it, while 'SDP' seems to have been kept for records by Ernest Wilson's Pop Sequence All Stars. 1963 saw a separate STEP-4400 series, which was handled by Saga Records. 'Billboard' of the 10th of February reported that Saga had taken over Silver Dollar, but the company seems to have regained its independence the following year - there's no evidence of Saga involvement after 1964. Saga's releases had a more decorative label than the usual one (3). They also had specific company sleeves, a die-cut one for the first dozen issues (9) and a picture one for the final six and re-pressings (10) - thanks to Ade Macrow of the 45Cat site for permission to use his scan here.
Silver Dollar continued to issue records until at least 1975, though there was a gap from 1971 to 1974; 1975 saw the release of the final 'Dancing Time' EPs, Nos. 60 and 61. Records remained on catalogue for a long time: the second company sleeve shown above lists a selection of records from 1960 to 1975. One label design served throughout, apart from the Saga period, but the 1975 EPs had light blue labels with black printing (2) rather than the original silver-on-dark-blue (1). As can be seen from the scans, several different kinds of sleeve were used, generally ones with pictures on the front and latterly with a list of currently available EPs added (7). In addition to the main label there was a 'Silver Dollar (Northern)' series (q.v.) which re-used Silver Dollar sides - it had a different label design and has been given a page of its own on this site. At least one EP, SDX-3918, appeared on the Standard label (4) with a Silver Dollar catalogue number; there may have been others. It is possible that at that time (1964) Saga still had rights to the Silver Dollar name and that 'Standard' was used as a substitute, but that is merely conjecture.
Manufacture of the early '70s records that I have seen in the vinyl was by British Homophone; at least one of the 1975 records was pressed by Orlake. The sleeve of SDP-3949 states that the record was distributed by BCM/UK of London WC1V 6XX; stickers on others indicate that ballroom specialists Northern Dance Services was another distributor. The discography below has several gaps in it, and help with filling them would be welcome. The tracks were invariably medleys, but because of the restrictions of space I have listed only the first tune on the first track on the first side of each record.
Copyright 2007 Robert Lyons.