AFVN DaNang 1969 Your Brother

Bob Mayben sent in a neat AFVN memory: "I was company clerk for the 43rd APU (Post Office). I have a 30 minute air check of “Your Brother” on AFVN DaNang that I recorded at the 80th Logistical Command in the Arts and Crafts shop."

LINK FIXED

AFVN DaNang - Your Brother 1969

AFRS Mail Call 1944

Here's a description from radiogoldindex.com:

Mail Call. May 24, 1944. Program #93. AFRS origination. The program is dedicated to the state of Kentucky. Borah Minevich and His Harmonica Rascals do a spectacular arrangement of, "Brazil." Mortimer Snerd tells Paulette Goddard about his first date. Charlie McCarthy tries to apologize to W. C. Fields for setting a skunk trap in Fields' garden. This is a well-known routine, using the same script as in, "The "Chase and Sanborn Program" recording from September 21, 1941. This time, W. C. loses his place in the script and mis-reads several lines. The date above is the recording date. The program was released June, 1944.


Early AFRS and WC Fields, total win.

Mail Call 1944

Wolfman Jack in Frankfurt 1975

Sometimes the AFRTS-LA jocks would visit the stations and possibly do a show.  In 1975 Wolfman visited the Frankfurt station.  Someone reading this was there for that.  What was it like?  What happened?  Who engineered it?

Wolfman at AFN Frankfurt 1975

 

Chris Noel 1966 VIDEO

Never thought I'd see this, here's a couple of minutes of Chris Noel recording A Date With Chris

Chris Noel video

What was radio?

I was writing a letter to Melvin and I thought I'd share:

When I was a kid, I had an old Grundig record player/tuner. In Minneapolis WDGY (Storz), KDWB (Drake) and KSTP were blowtorching at each other. Full service WCCO would pull 50 shares on a regular basis. I’d DX the evening trying for the furthest catch. Just not the same to hear a live stream from the internet and anyhow who really cares if they’re listening to a satellite feed from a station a thousand miles away. I guess some kids must get excited about radio today. I’m not sure why. Generic garbage, or sometimes someone mispronouncing voice tracks from far away.


A well recorded AM aircheck from the 60s sounds better than present day FM. It was part of the romance of radio. It was a friend. They’ve done so much to wreck AM and eventually managed to kill it. I’ve had line airchecks from WABC or WCFL that didn’t sound as good as an aircheck from a tuner. The sound chains were that good.

Radio was a contest. It was a life. It was a love. It was my career. I kicked tail it some markets and was bruised up in others, but it was a fight by people who cared playing by the same rules.

Armed Forces Radio is where I learned a lot of lessons and honed my skills. It would always be special.

The great stations were always a lot better than the sum of their parts, the magic and momentum. Now it’s an ipod with music that isn’t as good as on my ipod.

So what happened to it?

And yes Virginia, there was an AFVN-FM

By 1969, the AM station was missing an important element, the "Golden Sounds of Music".  Mike Halloran was one of the first on the new AFVN-FM.

Halloran had a radio career prior to the army and went on to great things after.  Before the FM station, he had been been commuting in for a weekly show on the Saigon station, sometimes under fire.

Let's relax with the Golden Sounds of Music

AFVN-FM 1969

Charlie Tuna 1982

Which kind of jockey?

Suddenly it's 1982, another morning show done and time for Charlie.  Over at Charlie's website he has an interview with the late fitness guru Jack LaLanne (is there anyone he didn't have a conversation with?)

Charlie Tuna 1982

Click here to visit Charlie Tuna's website

Jim Pewter 1976

A Friday, a new year and Jim Pewter.  Jim celebrated this music every day.  Writing, performing, playing the songs on the radio and being a record dealer.  He loves and shares this music.

Jim Pewter 12/31/76

Mary Turner

And we were proud to have her.  Mary started her show in 1982. 

From her official biography:
From the mid ‘70s to the early ‘90s, Mary Turner was the most popular female air personality on contemporary music radio. She was the highest-rated disc jockey on L.A.’s legendary KMET, the host of “Off The Record,” Westwood One’s nationally syndicated interview show, which aired on more than 300 stations weekly, and the host of the “Mary Turner Show” on Armed Forces Radio. After leaving radio in 1994, Dr. Pattiz attended UCLA where she became a certified drug and alcohol counselor and began working in the field of substance abuse. She received a Doctor of Psychology degree from the California Graduate Institute—now affiliated with The Chicago School—in 2008. Today she continues to be active in the field as a counselor and group leader and serves on the boards of DARE, the Musicians Assistance Program, Cedars-Sinai Medial Center’s COACH for Kids, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences' MusiCares, the Betty Ford Center, and the Betty Ford Institute. Dr. Pattiz is married to Norman Pattiz, founder and chairman of Westwood One Companies, and lives in Beverly Hills and Santa Barbara.


Now let's visit the show:

Mary Turner Show

This was never in the library...

January 2011 update

Wonderful bunch of transcriptions came in. Many were early library disks.  The rest were program disks.  Normally I don't get provenence on these (where did they come from?).  These came from the Pacific, primarily the Phillippines in 1944.  It's a different feeling when one can feel the history of _that_ disk.  They cleaned well and were mostly in great shape.  Hopefully you'll get a chance to hear them.  Also a bunch of One Night Stands, that was the bigband show that ran from WWII well into the 1960s, a bunch from 1955.  During WWII they started putting parts one and two of the same program on the same disk, they had to be flipped live.  In the civilian world they would have been on different disks to avaid dead air.  A lot of disks were damaged in wartime transit.  The network didn't want a broken disk to ruin two shows.  They were still doing that in 1955.  Why?

Discovery Channel has "Vietnam In HD" in pre-production.  Some AFVN/AFRTS clips may be in the final program.  Hi Doc!

Still rebuilding the new 12" turntable.  Anyone know where I can locate a 16" turntable?  Know anyone who has the stuff and would like to help with transfers?

December visits were 4884, January was 6118.  I know that's probably not all that interesting for the folks at home but more and more visit each month and I'm greatful for every click.  Thanks again!

Your comments are more than welcome on any post.

afrts@live.com

GI Jive

GI Jill (Martha Wilkerson) was our first big DJ.  She was the voice of home to thousands.

GI Jive 1944

The program continued well into the Korean War.

Wolfman Jack 1983

Wolfman was the only one that we'd get complaints about.  First thing I did at SCN when I could was get his airtime changed from 3am to 8pm.  There was only one Wolfman, I'm proud we had him.

Wolfman Jack

Chris Noel 1966

Time for another visit with Chris Noel, it's 1966 and the music is pretty good:

Chris Noel 1966

Chris Noel Starred in Soldier In the Rain (a particularly great movie) and Girl Happy with Elvis Presley.  In the 1965 she started her show with AFRTS.  She went to Vietnam, braved sniper fire and survived a helicopter crash.

Today she still helps the troops with the Vetsville Ceasefire House, a home for homeless veterans.  Please consider a contribution.

http://www.ceasefirehouse.org/

Historynet interview with Chris Noel

Roland Bynum 1984

Roland Bynum sent a note with good words for the blog.  This is another great moment in radio, Roland Bynum 1984.  I always admired how personable his presentation was and still is.

Roland Bynum 1984

Mosquito Network

WVUS New Caledonia was one on the stations on the Mosquito Network, a loose organization from the AEF in the Pacific.  Hy Averback was a Hollywood announcer before the war. 
Hy was also in that first group of AFRS announcers to train at Fox studios.

In 1943 WVUS did this broadcast to support at USO show there.

1943 WVUS Claude Thornhill All Navy Show

Palmer Payne adds: "When Bob Hope brought his USO entourage to Seoul in 1951, Hy Averback was with them. I did not meet him but one of our Seoul AFRS guys was able to do some interviews. Averback told him it brought back memories of his AFRS assignment during WWII."

By the 1960s, Averback was acting and directing on all sorts of network television.

The voice on the loudspeakers during MASH?  Hy Averback.

Time Magazine - Mosquito Network 1944

We get letters...

There's a lot of people who're interested:  If you saved anything, please let me know.  afrts@live.com


Hi Thom,


Thanks for sending these shows, but what I'd really like to hear would be some of the local shows by us guys who were military jocks. Do you have any air-checks of any of those shows?

I was at AFKN in Korea from 1971-75 and we had some super talented jocks come through there. Great memories! Those are the guys that I personally would really like to hear again. Any chance you can scare-up some old air-checks from any of us enlisted guys?

ALOHA from Tokyo,

-Kamasami Kong (a.k.a. PFC Robert Zix)

TOKYO-FM
InterFM, Tokyo
FM COCOLO, Osaka
KUMU, Honolulu

Kamasami?



You’ve just explained the biggest problem, I’d love to run a lot more tape of us in the field but VERY little tape seems to have survived. In Germany, the civilians saved airchecks but I’m trying to not turn the whole thing over to AFN. Then when the tape does exist, it seems to take upwards of six months to actually get the tapes.

Did you save any AFKN tape? Please say yes. In 1978 I was at Ft Devens and working with JJ Gould. He was a true fan of your work.

Welcome! And trades....

There's a bunch of older things that have been donated and I'm trying to figure how interested you'd be in hearing them.  I plan on posting the occasional Command Performance or Mail Call or such.  The network started in 1943. When I was in Korea and later in Panama I'd go to the record library and listen to the classic material.  Wonderful things, but never really stored in a particular order.  Digging through the library was part of the fun.  Up until the mid 70s apparently there was a mostly complete library in Germany.  Must have been a thing to behold.


If you have some material that could use a new home, please let me know.  If you'd like to trade original material or copies, please let me know.  This material needs to be shared.  Email Thom (612) 356-AFRS

Charlie Tuna 1991

So where were you in 1991?

The first Gulf War, Soviet Union crumbles, Princess Diana and Prince Charles split up. Topicality was a big piece of the Charlie Tuna show:

Charlie Tuna 1991

Get your breakfast serial at:

http://www.charlietuna.com/

Chickenman

I wish I could share these, but I just located the 1977 series and the Masked Minuteman series (did we run THAT one?), Chickenman cast in 1776... 

AFN in Afganistan is apparently STILL running these.  Great!

Dick Orkin makes the original 1966 ones available over at:

http://www.radio-ranch.com/chickenman.php

Chuck Cecil and the Swingin' Years

Chuck Cecil celebrated the bigband years starting in the 1950s on Los Angeles radio.  By 1973 he was syndicated all over the United States and was doing the Big Band Countdown for AFRTS

Lets take a look at the greatest hits of 1943.

Big Band Countdown Feb 1979

The aircheck is from AFN Frankfurt.  After the show, Paul Mako has a look at news.  The Shah of Iran had been kicked out of the country, what's next?

Currently, Chuck is STILL doing the show for KKJZ in Long Beach

Roger Carroll 1974

I sure didn't understand how it would play out, but my introduction to our AFRTS friends was Sunday mornings on Minneapolis radio.  In the 70s and early 80s Sunday mornings were the "public service ghetto" where mostly boring PSA shows would run.  But then there was the Wolfman, Gene Price, Roland Bynum and Roger Carroll doing record shows for the recruiters.  I didn't know who they were then but they were great then and now.  The programs were recorded by Roger Carroll productions over at Watermark.  The pacings different.  Enjoy!

Roger Carroll for the USAF 1974

Roger Carroll (image from the box of USAF transcriptions)

Laurie Allen

Welcome to the new year!  Laurie Allen has a look at two and a half decades of great rock and roll!

Laurie Allen 1993

If you're looking for voiceover with style, or you'd like to hear some great demos be sure to visit Laurie's website: http://www.laurieallenvo.com/

Roger Carroll 1973

What a nice way to start the year, Roger Carroll checked in and gave us the chance to present some of his shows.  Here's a nice 1st generation 1973 show:

Roger Carroll 1973

Roger had a very interesting career, take a look at this: Roger Carroll biography

Roger Carroll taken at sea on the USS  Voladore sub SS 490.broadcasting KMPC show