Dansette

My dear Friends

I would like to share with you a little about the history of my father's business. You may have heard of Dansette, a firm which produced record players in the fifties and sixties, and which contributed to the pop music culture in those decades.

Heading up the business, and before I was born. was my grandfather Morris Margolin, who came to England from Russia in the 1890's and who started a small family business in a furniture factory as a cabinet maker. He also had an interest in musical instruments, which he imported from the continent to sell. Instrumental in making the business successful in the 50's and 60's was my brother Samuel, who went into the business at age 20, and who was responsible for much of the subsequent design.

The Margolins decided to combine their interests in cabinet making and music to produce the 'Plus-a-Gram.'It was the first electric player in this country and was produced from 1934 until 1950. It became the forerunner of the Dansette. In the early 1950's BSR inroduced a British made autochanger at a realistic price as a basis for a new portable record player and suggested the name for it-Dansette-which was registered as a trademark in October 1952, the year after I was born. It was Mr McDonald, the chief of BSR, who invented the name-was he thinking of 'dancing?' We'll never know, but the name caught on and so did the record players, given the enthusiasm the new 'teenagers' showed in these players and their records.

I remember being taken to Old Street in the East end of London to see where the machines were made. I remember quite clearly all the wood shavings from the cabinets and the Garrard needles which were put on.

The Rock and Roll movement helped to boost sales of the Dansette, and the Beatles would have listened to records to give them inspiration for their own music. You could get all sorts of models of the record players and in different colours. Between the years 1950 and 1970 over one million Dansettes were sold. The company lasted until 1969; from a large profit-making organisation the company went into liquidation. But they had left their mark on the population of Britain and some people have kept their Dansette to this day.

Shalom from
Sister Gila