It's debatable whether Ra Records' 'Dance Along Series' deserves a page of its own, but I've allowed pages to Penny Farthing's 'Trophy Series' and Spark's 'Northern Soul' series on the strength of nothing more than overprints, and the Dance Along Series records - both of them - went a step further: in addition to the extra text they had white labels which distinguished them from Ra's mainstream yellow-labelled output. The records in question were both EPs by Sid Gateley & His Music; their catalogue numbers were taken from Ra's main RA-5000 series, and the tracks on them were mostly medleys of popular songs from days gone by. RA-5016 offered Quicksteps and Slow Foxtrots, while RA-5017 provided Waltzes and Cha-Chas. There's no date on either, but as RA-5015 came out in 1974 and 5018 in 1975 that at least narrows things down. The style of the matrix number in the run-off of RA-5016 indicates that the metalwork was done at Pye, but the pressing marks on the labels - the narrow island around the spindle hole, and a deep bevel further out - suggest that the actual pressing was done by Linguaphone. Gateley had previously put out a couple of singles on Ra, and he went out to make several Dance LPs for the independent Response label (q.v. both).
Copyright 2021 Robert Lyons.