Joan Edwards has a full plate of the Sugar Report. The program touched on the news from the entertainment world and played clips from current shows. We only have part one. Each of these shows are unique. They were one of a kind disks for one time airings on the AFRS shortwave station. The closest I can come to dating this is Wayne King started up his post-war band in 1946.
Saturday, November 29, 2014
Sugar Report - 1946
Labels:
1946,
Joan Edwards,
OTR,
Sugar Report
Friday, November 28, 2014
AFN SHAPE Bob Switcher 1977
It's a summery night in Soesterberg, 1977 and Bob Switcher has Music Off The Record..
Thanks Hans Knot!!
AFN SHAPE - Bob Switcher 1977
Hans says that this is really Bill Swisher. This sounds like the makings of a good story...
Hans says that this is really Bill Swisher. This sounds like the makings of a good story...
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
Chris Noel - 1967
The run wasn't that long but "A Date With Chris" was a very important thing to a lot of Vietnam era troops. It's easy to hear why.
Labels:
1967,
Chris Noel,
Date With Chris
Sunday, November 23, 2014
Could This Be You? - 1961
Staring in the 1950s, KVI Seattle was producing an interesting show "Could This Be You?" ran on the Golden West stations and later on Mutual.
The program was live recordings of people being pulled and is a precursor to Highway Patrol and Cops.
It's a pretty amazing job of educational radio, making it perfect for AFRTS.
Labels:
1961,
Could This Be You
Saturday, November 22, 2014
American Country Countdown - 1977
Before Bob Kingsley took over ACC it was hosted by Don Bowman on this special, Johnny Cash is the guest host on this 1977 visit.
Labels:
1977,
ACC,
American Country Countdown
Monday, November 17, 2014
Jon Rivers - Countdown Magazine 1990
Jon Rivers was a Marine in Vietnam that came back and worked for a ton of great stations. His radio ministry was heard everywhere on “POWERLINE” , “COUNTRY CROSSROADS, “MASTER CONTROL”, “THE BAPTIST HOUR”, “GOSPEL AMERICA” and “TWENTY THE COUNTDOWN MAGAZINE”.
Jubilee - 1943
I certainly wish I had both parts of this. In 1943, Art Tatum, Billie Holiday, Red Allen and an All-Star cast were part of Jubilee.
Los Angeles 10/April/1943 Henry Allen Sextet
Henry ‘Red’ Allen(t), J.C. Higginbotham (tb), Don Stovall (as), Alfred Williams(p), Benny Moten (b), Alvin Burroughs (d), Billie Holiday (v)
NBC Studios in Hollywood, and dubbed March 22. The broadcast took place on April 9 or 10, as they were normally transmitted on a Friday night.
Sunday, November 16, 2014
Gary Hannes CFN, Panama Canal Zone 1955
A few years ago Gary Hannes shared his memories of the Caribbean Forces Network (CFN, later SCN). Originally these were put up on a website with a company that went out of business..
CFN Ft Clayton 1955 (Photo: JWA Archives)
It was inevitable, I suppose, that radio broadcasting would be a major factor in my life. I was born in 1933, practically in the shadow of the antenna of one of America's first radio stations, WGY, Schenectady, New York. For the record, KDKA, Pittsburgh, was the first on the air in 1920, with WGY following less than two years later as the 12th station officially broadcasting in the USA. I grew up, then, with those wonderful after-school thrillers: Tom Mix, Jack Armstrong (All-American boy!!), Sky King, Don Winslow of the Navy, Little Orphan Annie, and many others. We had a Philco console model radio that physicallydominated the living room and audibly took control of our entire two story house in Tribes Hill, N.Y., a suburb of Amsterdam which was a bedroom community of Schenectady. I loved that radio with it's back-lighted faded yellow dial which showed only about 200 kilocycles at a time. There were two wooden knobs: volume and tuning. Hidden behind a faded brown grill cloth was a 12 inch speaker that furnished enough sound to reach even the third floor attic. On evenings and weekends my mom, dad, little sister and baby brother would park comfortably on couches and easy chairs near enough the radio to enjoy Amos 'n Andy, Jack Benny, Fibber McGee and Molly, Fred Allen, The Molle Mystery Theater, Friday night boxing, and scores of other delights. The ear candy was absolute heaven. We each lived with our own mental images of those radio characters. When TV arrived, most of us were shocked to see what many of our beloved radio stars really looked like! On that radio we heard the Pearl Harbor attack, all the bulletins of World War Two battles (and even kept a wall map with little flags showing allied gains and losses), the live report of FDR's death, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, and the surrender of both Germany and Japan.
My very first radio broadcasting experience was in that environment. I announced thru a six foot flexible vacuum cleaner tube, with my source of music a wind-up Victrola with steel needle. I recall my favorite shellac record at that time was an RCA Victor recording of "Der Fuhrer's Face" by Spike Jones and his City Slickers. My sister and brother were my captive audience, taking turns holding the end of the tube to their ears (one at a time!!!).
We moved from Tribes Hill to Amsterdam in 1947, the same year that WCSS came on the air in that city. By that time we had graduated from the old Philco radio to a Magnavox console model with a 78rpm record changer built-in. And, once again, as the only radio in a large house, its 12 inch speaker blared out from the living room all day long with WCSS (an independent station - no network affiliation) as the major source of entertainment. I was in Junior High School by this time and cocky enough to think I could do what those guys on WCSS did. Around this time I saw advertised in a Burnstein-Appleby mail order catalog a device known as a "phono oscillator" ("Hey kids, plug your record player into this and it will broadcast your music to any radio in the house!") "Heck," I thought, "if it will broadcast music to any radio, it should broadcast voice as well." Bottom line: a new radio station in Amsterdam, New York...on the air weekdays after school and all day Saturday and most of Sunday with a coverage of nearly a five mile radius (thanks to 100 feet of heavy copper wire as an antenna!). The FCC rattled its sabers around the time I entered Senior High School in 1949. The H.S. had a radio class that had connections to WCSS and every Friday the class would put on a 30 minute live drama right from the radio station studios.
One day in 1950 our radio teacher told us that WCSS was looking for a part-time announcer and would be conducting auditions the following week. I auditioned with 16 other hopefuls and ended up with the "job." Part time was 6 p.m. to midnight weekdays, a 12 hour shift on Saturday, and the entire broadcast day on Sunday (8 a.m. to 6 p.m.). It ended up being more hours than the regular announcers worked, at one buck an hour....but with my love of radio, I would have welcomed even more time on the air! In those days we were not known as "D.J.'s". We were "radio announcers" who did anything that required a voice: introducing a name, we did it!
In the fall of 1951 I went to Valparaiso Technical Institute in Valparaiso, Indiana, one of the country's top electronic trade schools. In those days, having a First Phone FCC license was desirable if an announcer wanted to earn more than four or five hundred dollars a month. He could double as a bonafide engineer at any small or medium market station. It was that license I was hoping to get by attending VTI. While at VTI, several of us with previous commercial broadcast experience persuaded the school to put its own closed-circuit station on the air, so WVTI was born. Plus, to earn food money, I worked part-time (nights and weekends) as announcer on WIMS in Michigan City, some 25 miles from Valpo.
On graduation from VTI in the spring of 1953 I worked as a technician on two secret air force projects at the General Electric plant in Utica, N.Y. while moonlighting as booth announcer on WKTV-TV. I came as close as I'd ever come to being fired in this profession. Reason? It was customary to crowd two announcers into the 3 by 5 foot announce booth if there were two announceable events on any given break. We had a standard I.D. plus a 10 second "Jack's Tasty Snacks" spot to crowd into a 15 second cutaway, so Dick Brown (with whom I had worked several years previously on WCSS) and I jammed into the booth. There was only one chair so I took it as the spot reader and Dick inverted a metal wastebasket to sit on. On cue, Dick did his station I.D., then I launched into my spot, which contained lots of delightful alliterations and which was more like a 30 second spot to be squeezed into 15 seconds. Just as I started racing thru this minor nightmare, Dick passed an enormous amount of gas into the metal wastebasket which, in turn, threw me into absolute hysterics. Within mere seconds came management's warning via a phone call. I got back at Dick, though. That night after he left, I made a 180 degree turn of the circular blade of the saw he used daily on a live infomercial. Boy, did he have trouble next day trying to saw thru a plank with "this amazing power tool!!!" At the end of 1953 my family moved to Mexico City so my dad could take up a job as plant manager for the Mexican branch of Mohawk Carpets, the company he had been associated with for thirty some years. I went to Mexico City College and struggled to learn Spanish until the fall of 1954. The Korean conflict was winding down by this time, but the draft was still in effect. Being out of the country I was classified somewhere around 4-C, or in layman's terms: "unavailable." However, at this time my girlfriend of some five years suddenly decided she was going to marry a Turkish chef at the restaurant where she was waitressing at Jones Beach on Long Island. When I heard this, I became so emotionally irrational that I decided to call my old draft board back in the USA and volunteer for the draft.
By mid-November, 1954, I was doing my basic training at Fort Bliss. To me, those were the funniest eight weeks of my life. Since I was about four years older than the majority of the recruits, I didn't buck the system....just followed orders and observed the rather humorous foibles of the rest of the troops.
Since the military was now pretty much out of Korea with no other conflicts looming on the horizon, there seemed to exist a lack of direction from the Pentagon as to what all these new draftees were going to be doing. So, my second eight weeks found me in what was known as an M-33 radar van, an already obsolete device employed by the artillery to automatically "lock-on" to an enemy airplane, via radar, and shoot that bugger out of the sky. Somewhere near the end of those eight delightful weeks, it was announced during an informal assignment meeting that "Hannes would be going to Detroit to attend newspaper correspondent's classes." O.K. by me. BUT, a few days later I was told to see a certain officer at C and A (classification and assignment) at Bliss. When I got there I was told the correspondent's schooling was canceled and that I would go to wherever the powers-that-be assigned me. Fortunately, a few minutes later I was fated to meet one of those "powers." I tend to be "the friendly sort" and so while tooling down the hall from my meeting, I ran into a fellow who turned out to be a native of Michigan City, Indiana. Not only that, but he had heard me on WIMS back in my part-time days there. I asked him what his job was in the military, and he told me he assigned second eight week "graduates" to foreign assignments. I asked how he did that and he told me, "If Alaska Command wants 30 troopers, I take the first 30 names on the list and assign them to Alaska, and so on down the list. Aptitude and skills have no part in most of my assignments." "Aha," thought I. Then, out loud I asked: "What would happen if I really wanted to be assigned to Hawaii? Could you assign me there?" "Sure," said my new-found friend, "but Hawaii these days is chicken doo-doo since the command is gung-ho on training."
"Then where," I asked, "would a better place be?" "Ah...by far, the best duty is in the Panama Canal Zone. Most everybody is doing half-days in almost any military job right now, but....looking over your record, I see nobody with your MOS is needed there." "I speak Spanish," I said, "so maybe they can find something for me to do." "Well, I see that out of the 120 in your group, 110 are to be assigned to Thule, Greenland. The other ten will be going to Puerto Rico and the Canal Zone, five to each place. Would you like either of those?" "Hell, yes....how's about the CZ??" "Done," he said, even though I somehow didn't believe him.
Came the day of assignment and I recall very vividly standing at ease outside our barracks at Bliss as the sergeant called off names and assignments. By the time he got to my name I was shaking and sweating, since, so far everybody called was going to that hunk of ice up north. When the sarge said "Hannes, Panama," I nearly passed out!
By now it was mid-February, 1955, and then came a slow train trip to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, only to find out the MATS ship to the Caribbean had left the day before our arrival. It would be thirty more days of waiting. But, what better place to wait than just across the river from NYC!!! The USO was still very active, and buses were free, so about every other day a bunch of us would head to the Big Apple for fun and games. I went to Birdland for a wonderful jazz fix, to a hidden den in the worst part of Brooklyn to see and hear Jack Teagarden sound-off with his ensemble, Louis Prima at at highway club in Jersey, plus a bevy of now-forgotten places in many corners of my favorite town. I also had the opportunity, for the first time in my life, to meet and hang out with my uncle, Art Hannes, who was the announcer on the Ed Sullivan Show. By the time he left, Art had been the first and longest-lasting (16 years) announcer for Sullivan. Oh boy, do I have some stories from him about his experiences!!!
Well, finally the time came to ship out to the Caribbean.
My very first radio broadcasting experience was in that environment. I announced thru a six foot flexible vacuum cleaner tube, with my source of music a wind-up Victrola with steel needle. I recall my favorite shellac record at that time was an RCA Victor recording of "Der Fuhrer's Face" by Spike Jones and his City Slickers. My sister and brother were my captive audience, taking turns holding the end of the tube to their ears (one at a time!!!).
We moved from Tribes Hill to Amsterdam in 1947, the same year that WCSS came on the air in that city. By that time we had graduated from the old Philco radio to a Magnavox console model with a 78rpm record changer built-in. And, once again, as the only radio in a large house, its 12 inch speaker blared out from the living room all day long with WCSS (an independent station - no network affiliation) as the major source of entertainment. I was in Junior High School by this time and cocky enough to think I could do what those guys on WCSS did. Around this time I saw advertised in a Burnstein-Appleby mail order catalog a device known as a "phono oscillator" ("Hey kids, plug your record player into this and it will broadcast your music to any radio in the house!") "Heck," I thought, "if it will broadcast music to any radio, it should broadcast voice as well." Bottom line: a new radio station in Amsterdam, New York...on the air weekdays after school and all day Saturday and most of Sunday with a coverage of nearly a five mile radius (thanks to 100 feet of heavy copper wire as an antenna!). The FCC rattled its sabers around the time I entered Senior High School in 1949. The H.S. had a radio class that had connections to WCSS and every Friday the class would put on a 30 minute live drama right from the radio station studios.
One day in 1950 our radio teacher told us that WCSS was looking for a part-time announcer and would be conducting auditions the following week. I auditioned with 16 other hopefuls and ended up with the "job." Part time was 6 p.m. to midnight weekdays, a 12 hour shift on Saturday, and the entire broadcast day on Sunday (8 a.m. to 6 p.m.). It ended up being more hours than the regular announcers worked, at one buck an hour....but with my love of radio, I would have welcomed even more time on the air! In those days we were not known as "D.J.'s". We were "radio announcers" who did anything that required a voice: introducing a name, we did it!
In the fall of 1951 I went to Valparaiso Technical Institute in Valparaiso, Indiana, one of the country's top electronic trade schools. In those days, having a First Phone FCC license was desirable if an announcer wanted to earn more than four or five hundred dollars a month. He could double as a bonafide engineer at any small or medium market station. It was that license I was hoping to get by attending VTI. While at VTI, several of us with previous commercial broadcast experience persuaded the school to put its own closed-circuit station on the air, so WVTI was born. Plus, to earn food money, I worked part-time (nights and weekends) as announcer on WIMS in Michigan City, some 25 miles from Valpo.
On graduation from VTI in the spring of 1953 I worked as a technician on two secret air force projects at the General Electric plant in Utica, N.Y. while moonlighting as booth announcer on WKTV-TV. I came as close as I'd ever come to being fired in this profession. Reason? It was customary to crowd two announcers into the 3 by 5 foot announce booth if there were two announceable events on any given break. We had a standard I.D. plus a 10 second "Jack's Tasty Snacks" spot to crowd into a 15 second cutaway, so Dick Brown (with whom I had worked several years previously on WCSS) and I jammed into the booth. There was only one chair so I took it as the spot reader and Dick inverted a metal wastebasket to sit on. On cue, Dick did his station I.D., then I launched into my spot, which contained lots of delightful alliterations and which was more like a 30 second spot to be squeezed into 15 seconds. Just as I started racing thru this minor nightmare, Dick passed an enormous amount of gas into the metal wastebasket which, in turn, threw me into absolute hysterics. Within mere seconds came management's warning via a phone call. I got back at Dick, though. That night after he left, I made a 180 degree turn of the circular blade of the saw he used daily on a live infomercial. Boy, did he have trouble next day trying to saw thru a plank with "this amazing power tool!!!" At the end of 1953 my family moved to Mexico City so my dad could take up a job as plant manager for the Mexican branch of Mohawk Carpets, the company he had been associated with for thirty some years. I went to Mexico City College and struggled to learn Spanish until the fall of 1954. The Korean conflict was winding down by this time, but the draft was still in effect. Being out of the country I was classified somewhere around 4-C, or in layman's terms: "unavailable." However, at this time my girlfriend of some five years suddenly decided she was going to marry a Turkish chef at the restaurant where she was waitressing at Jones Beach on Long Island. When I heard this, I became so emotionally irrational that I decided to call my old draft board back in the USA and volunteer for the draft.
By mid-November, 1954, I was doing my basic training at Fort Bliss. To me, those were the funniest eight weeks of my life. Since I was about four years older than the majority of the recruits, I didn't buck the system....just followed orders and observed the rather humorous foibles of the rest of the troops.
Since the military was now pretty much out of Korea with no other conflicts looming on the horizon, there seemed to exist a lack of direction from the Pentagon as to what all these new draftees were going to be doing. So, my second eight weeks found me in what was known as an M-33 radar van, an already obsolete device employed by the artillery to automatically "lock-on" to an enemy airplane, via radar, and shoot that bugger out of the sky. Somewhere near the end of those eight delightful weeks, it was announced during an informal assignment meeting that "Hannes would be going to Detroit to attend newspaper correspondent's classes." O.K. by me. BUT, a few days later I was told to see a certain officer at C and A (classification and assignment) at Bliss. When I got there I was told the correspondent's schooling was canceled and that I would go to wherever the powers-that-be assigned me. Fortunately, a few minutes later I was fated to meet one of those "powers." I tend to be "the friendly sort" and so while tooling down the hall from my meeting, I ran into a fellow who turned out to be a native of Michigan City, Indiana. Not only that, but he had heard me on WIMS back in my part-time days there. I asked him what his job was in the military, and he told me he assigned second eight week "graduates" to foreign assignments. I asked how he did that and he told me, "If Alaska Command wants 30 troopers, I take the first 30 names on the list and assign them to Alaska, and so on down the list. Aptitude and skills have no part in most of my assignments." "Aha," thought I. Then, out loud I asked: "What would happen if I really wanted to be assigned to Hawaii? Could you assign me there?" "Sure," said my new-found friend, "but Hawaii these days is chicken doo-doo since the command is gung-ho on training."
"Then where," I asked, "would a better place be?" "Ah...by far, the best duty is in the Panama Canal Zone. Most everybody is doing half-days in almost any military job right now, but....looking over your record, I see nobody with your MOS is needed there." "I speak Spanish," I said, "so maybe they can find something for me to do." "Well, I see that out of the 120 in your group, 110 are to be assigned to Thule, Greenland. The other ten will be going to Puerto Rico and the Canal Zone, five to each place. Would you like either of those?" "Hell, yes....how's about the CZ??" "Done," he said, even though I somehow didn't believe him.
Came the day of assignment and I recall very vividly standing at ease outside our barracks at Bliss as the sergeant called off names and assignments. By the time he got to my name I was shaking and sweating, since, so far everybody called was going to that hunk of ice up north. When the sarge said "Hannes, Panama," I nearly passed out!
By now it was mid-February, 1955, and then came a slow train trip to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, only to find out the MATS ship to the Caribbean had left the day before our arrival. It would be thirty more days of waiting. But, what better place to wait than just across the river from NYC!!! The USO was still very active, and buses were free, so about every other day a bunch of us would head to the Big Apple for fun and games. I went to Birdland for a wonderful jazz fix, to a hidden den in the worst part of Brooklyn to see and hear Jack Teagarden sound-off with his ensemble, Louis Prima at at highway club in Jersey, plus a bevy of now-forgotten places in many corners of my favorite town. I also had the opportunity, for the first time in my life, to meet and hang out with my uncle, Art Hannes, who was the announcer on the Ed Sullivan Show. By the time he left, Art had been the first and longest-lasting (16 years) announcer for Sullivan. Oh boy, do I have some stories from him about his experiences!!!
Well, finally the time came to ship out to the Caribbean.
Labels:
1955,
CFN,
Gary Hannes,
SCN
Saturday, November 15, 2014
Join us on facebook
The afrtsarchive.blogspot.com facebook page is great way to stay updated and share your memories and requests. click here and be sure to "like" the page.
Thanks!
Thanks!
Thursday, November 13, 2014
Charlie Tuna - 1988
Ask must anyone about Armed Forces Radio in 70s, 80s and 90s and they'll remember different things, but always Charlie Tuna.
Charlie woke the world for a quarter century. Who else can make THAT claim?
Visit Charlie's website at http://www.charlietuna.com
Labels:
1988,
Charlie Tuna
Thanks John!
Longtime friend of the blog John just made a contribution. A bunch of really great early 60s shows will be finding a new home. I'd like to say thank you! When you click the "Donate Via PayPal" button it does two things, it allows us to get better things. Many times thing come up and I'm just a few dollars short of being able to make it happen. It says that this is important to you. You never have to but I'm very grateful if you choose to do it. Thank you for visiting!
We Who Fight
This was a great show from WWII with the troops telling their stories. I've located a few partial shows, recently transferred. Take a listen:
Labels:
1943,
OTR,
We Who Fight
Monday, November 10, 2014
Chris Noel 1968
Chris Noel was very important to Vietnam era troops. Her show A Date With Chris was the girl next door to thousands. Today Chris still serves with her shelter for homeless veterans. She needs you help, please click here.
But here's how it sounded in 1968
Labels:
1968,
Chris Hall,
Date With Chris
Army Hour - 1970
The Army Hour had a long run. PAO shops all over the country getting the message out. Aired on hundreds of stations in the US, most of the time it was also aired on AFRTS.
Top Pops
Between 1962 and 1975 the weeks new hits would ship on special albums, the "TPs" would have this weeks 45s in a handy place. These 650 albums were a wonderful, easy to find oldies library. After 1975 they made similar disks but they'd be filed at random in the regular library.
Saturday, November 8, 2014
Jill's All Time Jukebox 1944
Martha Wilkerson did the GI Jive show. Starting near the end of the war was the "All-Time Jukebox", memories with GI Jill. Here's a 1944 visit
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
Wes Wilson - AFRTS Torrejon 1982
Christmas is coming. 1982 from Torrejon AB here's Wes Wilson.
Labels:
1982,
Torrejon,
Wes Wilson
Sunday, November 2, 2014
Invitation to Learning - 1950
"The Voice Of Information and Education", over the years the network took that very seriously. Part of that was being done by stateside radio and part of it was an obligation to the troops. In 1950 "Invitation To Learning" had a panel discussion about the writer Cicero. I wonder if such things will ever find a mass audience again. The program continued well into the 1960s
Labels:
1950,
Invitation to Learning
Walt "Baby" Love - the Countdown - 1990
Walt "Baby" Love has spent almost four decades in radio. In 1990 he was doing "The Countdown", which ran every weekend.
While still making great radio, Walt practices his ministry, visit his website:
Labels:
1990,
The Countdown,
Walt Baby Love
AFVN PSAs 1970-71
Duke Miller at AFVN
We pause for Command Information. These are from 1970-71. Primary voices are Doug Jennings, Phil Davies and Bob Kohtz
FEN - Frank Knauer 1980
Chip Barris recorded this on Kedena AB. Frank Knauer was running the AFKN Taegu station 1977. This is the second hour of an East Of Midnight that was posted a few years ago.
Labels:
1980,
FEN,
Frank Knauer
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