The Society for International Folk Dancing was founded in 1946 and is still going strong some seventy-three years on. It was formed with the intentions of studying folk-dance, of alerting people to the different kinds of dance that can be found in various countries, and of helping them to take part in such dances. It issued a series of ten 78rpm records in the early 1950s, and earned itself a place on this site by putting out thirteen 7" EPs in or around the 1970s. There aren't any dates on the labels, but the backs of the sleeves of one set of issues have a retail price of 85p on them, which shows that they post-date decimalization and are therefore from 1971 or after. Nine EPs in the set appear to have been issued four times, with variations in their labels. The following is conjectural, to a certain extent, but I'm quietly confident that it is more or less correct.
Simon Guest, a long-time member of the Society, was able to state that the EPs were issued between the late 1960s or early 1970s and the early 1980s. The first batch appears to have consisted of nine discs, numbered in the SIFD EP-0s. They seem to have been issued twice: once with a reference to Recorded Sound Studios at the top of the label (1), then with a reference to the Magnegraph Recording Company (2) - thanks to Ade Macrow of the 45cat site for permission to use his scan here. In both cases the labels were pale blue and rather old-fashioned looking. Catalogue numbers were in a SIFD EP-0 series, and the Society's name included a 'The' at the front. The matrix numbers were taken from an RSL series which was used by Recorded Sound Ltd, so it seems like a good bet that the labels with the reference to Recorded Sound Studios were the earliest. The Recorded Sound Studios were bought by Scotia Investments in 1971 and underwent a name change to Nova Sound between May and June of that year, so EPs the Studio's name on them must be from earlier than that. I haven't been able to establish whether those EPs had picture sleeve or not - my copy has a plain white card one.
The sleeves of the 'Magnegraph' series are the ones with '85p' on them. Magnegraph doesn't seem to have survived long into the second half of the '70s, so we can tentatively date these between February 1971 and the middle of the decade. They shared a common sleeve with a picture of two legs, crossed, on the front, and a list of available recordings on the back.
All nine EPs seem to have been re-reissued with new cream-and-red labels with the Society's address, in Cheam, at the bottom. They were re-numbered in an RSL series (these numbers were actually the matrix numbers of the first couple of issues), and had 'A Selection Of European Folk Dances' on the label instead of the Society's name, and the artists' names were omitted (3). A tenth EP was added to the series. One cover was used for all ten records (5); it was basically the same as that which was used for the 'Magnegraph' series.
Finally those ten EPs were reissued with the same kind of cream-and-red labels but without the address and with the Society's name (minus the 'The') instead of the 'A Selection...' text in the middle (4). Again, the artists' names were omitted. This final issue, which may be from the early '80s but looks older, was given a new one-size-fits-all multicoloured sleeve with dancers on (6); the text on the back was the same for all the records but the track listings changed accordingly. Catalogue numbers were now in the EP-0s, the old SIFD EP-1 becoming EP-1, and so on. A twin-pack and a final EP were added to the original nine-plus-one, bringing the total to thirteen. Unusually, there doesn't seem to be a linking groove between the tracks on any of the records. Manufacture of the few copies that I've seen in the vinyl has been by British Homophone. Thanks to Richard Mellish and Simon Guest of the SIFD for help in putting this page together, and to Sam Mauger for bringing the label to my attention.
Copyright 2019 Robert Lyons.