Armed Forces Radio Service Basic Music Library Recordings

It is a warm, no, a swelteringly hot afternoon, but the scenery is something that you have never imagined. A vividly blue sky with the occasional puffy white cloud reigns over an even bluer ocean, green coconuts swelling high above your head, and a beach so beautiful that it is hard to believe. It has been a good day, and you have some precious free time before evening chow. Your squad has been over to the new rifle range that the Sea Bees scraped out with their bulldozers, and there is some satisfaction in knowing that you and the men whom your life will soon depend can hit the target more than they miss. You smile to think that your M1 Garand is now cleaner than most of the pots and spoons in "Cookie's" tent. Feeding hungry Marines has always been a thankless job.

You know that something big is coming in your near future because the Brass has seemed nervous lately, but you have been in this War long enough to know that they are not going to tell a Lance Corporal what is going on until they think the Lance Corporal needs to know, and even then you might not know what it is until it's over. Tonight, some of your buddies are going to while away a few hours at a craps game that's sprung up on the other side of the camp, but you plan on spending the cool evening writing another letter to your girl back home. You get out the photograph she sent in her last letter. You smile as a Marine in the next tent turns on the radio, filling the air with surprisingly good music. You may not realize it, but you may be hearing better and newer music than the folks back home.

Before the war, Army commands in Alaska and the Panama Canal Zone had set up radio networks for their troops bivouacked far away from their parent command. The broadcasts were primarily to disseminate administrative information, but the commanders also allowed music to be played over the network from the record collections of troops stationed at headquarters. These networks would form the basis of the Armed Forces Radio Service.

Several workers in the radio industry knew they were likely to be drafted, and the idea of putting on a uniform and continuing to do what they did in civilian life was much preferable to carrying a rifle. These radio soldiers soon realized that rather than satisfying a sponsor who might be shilling dish-soap flakes or breakfast cereal, their new mission was to make that Lance Corporal in the South Pacific happy. With this in mind, the productions released by AFRS tended to be of even higher quality than commercial broadcasts.

In the early months of the War, the Special Services Division and AFRS were creating a huge amount of content, but shortwave broadcast was the primary way to get it to the men overseas. In 1941, the USO began collecting phonographs, needles, and disks to be sent with "Buddy Kits" to units deployed overseas, and AFRS expanded on the concept. By January 1943, AFRS was pressing almost 7,900 transcription disks monthly, by October 1945 they were up to 117,695 pressings. The disks were classified as Type A) AFRS Productions like Command Performance, G.I. Jive, Mail Call, and G.I. Journal; Type B) Off-network programs, which were popular with the troops although they had to be edited to remove any commercial reference (Type B are also an excellent source for OTR collectors); and Type C) Library recordings which were recorded in AFRS Hollywood studios.

The Basic Music Library grew to include thousands of recorded sides from a huge variety of artists. The civilian artists recording the disks did so without pay, but since it was to be their contribution to the War effort, it was not uncommon for them to pull out all the stops to make the best, sometimes wildly experimental, recordings of their careers. A huge variety was called for because the disks had to appeal to the high-brow tastes of the Officer class as well as the Hill-Billy tastes of recruits from small-town America, not to mention the "Hep-cat" tastes of big-city boys. There was also programming for African American and Latin American troops.

The songs and programs broadcast from overseas stations were intended for the troops, but the civilians in the newly liberated territories could pick up the broadcasts on their own radios, which they could now play without fear. The music from the AFRS Basic Music Library thereby helped to spread American culture.

See also: State Dept Latin American Popular Music Series