AFRTS Archive

Minnesota?

2012-01-31T06:24:00.000-06:00

There has been a lot of vistors from Minnesota and Wisconsin. Would you possibly be interested in some sort of informal get together this spring at Casa Whetston in St Paul? Nothing is planned yet, just looking for interest.

What do you think?

afrts@live.com

AFN Bremerhaven 1968

2012-01-29T17:12:00.000-06:00

Guenther sent another goodie. In 1968 he recorded a lot of clips of the Bremerhaven station. He just put a bunch of it together and it's a fun bit.

AFN Bremerhaven 1968

Gene Price 1974

2012-01-29T12:48:00.000-06:00

And now Gene Pierce, er Price will tell us all about joining todays Army. This is pretty close to the time where I'm sure they had something to do with me doing just that.

Gene Price Country Express 1974

These were produced by Roger Carroll's company for the Army and others for the Air Force, featuring Gene, Roland Bynum, Roger and Wolfman Jack.

Charlie Tuna 1980

2012-01-29T12:04:00.000-06:00

Charlie with Steve Allen in 1999

I hope that you've visited Charlie's website, lot's of pictures, stories, newsbits.

http://www.charlietuna.com

It's time well-spent. Right now it's a 1980 visit with Charlie.

Charlie Tuna 1980

Jim Pewter 1980

2012-01-29T10:27:00.000-06:00

Gene Price, Charlie Tuna and Jim

More memories with Jim. In 1980 I was at SCN and would hear the way that he'd craft a show. Always something that I hadn't heard before...that was good. Then it was off to the library. At SCN the 'old library' was types onto large index cards, with a huge machine that had them sorted. Do you have a picture of it? Apparently in the mid 80s it finally gave up.

It's 1980, today Jim tells you "What was Beethoven's favorite fruit?"

Jim Pewter 1980

19 Years Of Hit Music 1973

2012-01-29T10:15:00.000-06:00

Richard Clemmons at AFPN

We're up to the last hour of the 19 Years Of Hit Music. The Spotlight is on 1973. If you haven't heard the story yet the same series was redone as "The Hitmakers" that ran for several years on FEN and will be heard here. The same crew did a 4 hour Beatles special which we'll also hear here. Thanks Richard and AFPN!

19 Years Of Hit Music - 1973

Canadian and British Armed Forces Radio

2012-01-28T20:08:00.001-06:00

In the early 60s, CFN was the Caribbean Forces Network in the Canal Zone. In 2012 CFN is the Canadian Forces Network in Europe. They stream live.

CFN Live Stream

AND the run the classic AT40s on the weekend,

British forces also have a live stream
BFBS live stream

I wish we had a live stream.

GI Jive 1945

2012-01-24T20:16:00.000-06:00

Martha Wilkerson was GI Jill, the first really big homegrown star on the network.

GI Jive #721

Chris Noel sings for the troops from Korat

2012-01-23T21:11:00.002-06:00

Ira Cook 1965

2012-01-22T20:30:00.003-06:00

Ira was yet another Minnesotan, from Duluth. He was an actor, composer and DJ. His compositions include "Pony Tail", "Sunday Barbeque", and "Your Theme" among others .His Los Angeles broadcasting career spanned 26 years, sixteen of which were at KMPC. He served in the US Army during World War II. Ira started with AFRTS in 1961. He retired in the early 1980s. We lost Ira in 2007.

Ira Cook 1965

Where does all of this come from?

2012-01-22T20:01:00.000-06:00

Fortunately many people saved a little history from AFRTS. We welcome anything you'd care to share. Pictures, tapes, records taking up space at the house an most importantly, your memories. Contact me if you'd like to help. afrts@live.com

AFN's Bill Boyd with the "1605 to Nashville"

Pete Smith 1983

2012-01-22T12:27:00.002-06:00

Pete Smith was part of the EZ listening tradition at AFRTS. He followed John Doremus, who followed Jim Ameche. He had quite a career in Los Angeles radio KNX; KDAY, 1956-58; KRKD, 1958-61; KNOB; KPOL; KMPC, 1961-88; KJQI/KOJY, 1993-95; KGIL, 1998. Pete was part of "Music of Your Life."

Pete Smith 1983

19 Years Of Hit Music 1972

2012-01-22T12:12:00.001-06:00

19 Years of Hit Music Continues. Next week with 1973 is the end of this series. AFPN did a very neat Beatles special which will be coming up, and then a redid version of 19 Years, called "The Hitmakers". That ran for several years.

It's 1972:

19 Years of Hit Music - 1972

Bob Stoffel

2012-01-18T17:32:00.002-06:00

Bob Stoffel AFVN

We've lost a friend. Bob Stoffel was the creator and moderator of the AFN group over at yahoo. Bob did a lot for all of us and is in our prayers. Bob told his story to our friends at http://www.macoi.net/ an amazing collection of AFVN biographies.

Bob said:

Originally I was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division PIO office in Phu Bai. After arriving in country in January 1970, I impressed the PIO Major, Richard Bryan, with my ability to take the Hometowner News Program to the Number One position of all Army Divisions worldwide. The Commanding General of the 101st was also pleased, I was told. By May of that year, Major Bryan allowed me to transfer, without orders, to AFVN DaNang, for doing such a good job at the PIO office. I was told I would be doing two live sports shows a day to approximately 75,000 GIs and to the CG of our division who watched TV every day. Major Bryan wanted him to see my Screaming Eagle patch on my uniform and not forget the 101st. He only asked that I report back to the 101st each month on payday, which I did, to see that I was okay.

I soon discovered that AFVN DaNang was sorely lacking in sports graphics to help present sports news each night. So I wrote to every major sports outlet in the United States begging for help. Within weeks I was inundated with sports slides from NASCAR,the PGA, the NFL, the NBA, etc. I never knew there were so many golfers. I amassed a small treasure trove of sports slides of every conceivable sport on the planet.

I was on the air (two sports shows) daily, at 6 PM and 11 PM. Roger Stillman (whose bio appears above) did the news with me. After the 11pm newscast was finished, I (and several partners in crime from the station) drove down from Monkey Mountain to the PX at the Navy facility in DaNang. The Navy Chief in charge of the mess area (and pastry shoppe) loved country music. So each night I would take him a dub of country music. In exchange, he would load up our jeep with everything from steaks to doughnuts. I gained a few pounds during my time in Vietnam and it has taken 40 years to get rid of it.

One of the most interesting assignments I had while working at AFVN DaNang was to interview Miss America 1969 when she and her entourage of five runner-up girls visited the Camp Eagle headquarters of the 101st. They would be putting on a show in the "Bob Hope Amphitheatre" (as we called it). Since I knew Camp Eagle like the back of my hand, I was told that I was to do the interview. Actually, I thought this was some kind of cruel joke since I had not seen an American girl in almost eight months. Oh, there were "doughnut dollies" working in Vietnam, but I would only see them from a couple of miles away. I knew they were girls because in the distance they jiggled when they walked. Guys didn't jiggle! The first American girl I was going to see was Miss America, up close, I mean two feet from me. I was sweating (and dreading) this assignment. I was nervous through the entire interview. Their perfume smelled so great. Their jeans and shirts looked great on them. I did not handle this close-quarter torture very well. To this day, I have no idea if I was able to get a usable interview to air on the radio.

In the Summer of 1970, the PIO Major told me he was promoting me to E5 and changing my MOS from Journalist to Broadcast Specialist. By late October, a new Major had taken control of the PIO office at the 101st. He decided that all of his personnel should be in the field in some capacity getting the story of the GIs on the front line. I had only two weeks to go before returning home, so I dreaded the thought of going into the field and putting myself in harm's way. Fortunately, I was able to stay at the PIO office before shipping out.

When I returned home on my way to Europe to finish out my Army commitment, I was going to be married. I contacted my former Major (now a Lieutenant Colonel) Bryan at the Pentagon, and he agreed to be my Best Man. He and his wife flew to Charlotte to participate in the ceremony. I was so pleased that he would go out of his way to come to be a part of my wedding.

Today, I live on disability following a heart attack in 1997 and a 25-year career in broadcasting at the ABC-TV affiliate in Charlotte. My free time is spent running a website for former members of The American Forces Radio and Television Service worldwide. It began as a way to keep in touch with those who had worked at AFN Europe but soon grew to include anyone, military or civilian, who worked with military broadcasting. Today (as of March 2011), my group numbers 418. The earliest serving member began working at AFN Europe in 1946 . . . and some members are still working for AFN in Europe today. Even the Commanding Officer of AFN is a member.

WCPE Tribute to Bob

Laura Lee and the Jazz Beat

2012-01-15T09:24:00.001-06:00

We played a lot of jazz well into the 1980s and spread the music worldwide. In 1986 Laura Lee hosted the Jazz Beat, give a listen:

AFRTS Jazz Beat with Laura Lee 1985

Mary Turner 1983

2012-01-15T09:06:00.001-06:00

Mary Turner now.

In the 80s and 1990s Mary Turners show was so popular she had two programs on the network. Her regular Mary Turner Show and "Off The Record", where she interviewed rock's biggest stars.

She made waves in Los Angeles radio too, and eleven year run at KMET and returning in the 90s to KSLX. Now she's involved in many charitable causes including the Betty Ford Center in Ranch Mirage.

Off The Record - Mary Turner 1983

19 Years Of Hit Music - 1971

2012-01-15T08:53:00.011-06:00

Richard Clemmons has more details on the "19 Years Of Hot Music":

Thanks for the post on "Archive." It was 37 years ago I wrote and put that program together. I'm surprised that is the one that stuck around. "Hitmakers" was the update used several years after "19 years." Forgive my old memory but the announcer on "19 years" didn't change at all. I did the voicing on "Hitmakers" and may my friend Fred Miles Watson forgive me, he is the voice...the original voice...on "19 Years." I just plain forgot. FYI Sandy Dellar was the dependent wife of an Air Force Seargent. She worked with us in the newsroom as the TV weatherperson and some radio news. Ron Joyce was our then radio newscaster, John Lynn was the news director, Charlie Kemplin edited the one munute montages previewing the upcoming year and Gene Picket was my boss. Having always been a "Oldies" fan, I came up with this idea of a year ender and Gene said go. The rest was nearly endless hours of writing, getting the others involved in the mania so they too would write, and it all came together. I'm amazed you found the original "19 Years of Hit Music. It's great to hear it again. Even I never kept that one. I do, however, have all the "Hitmakers" tapes and "The Golden Age of the Beatles."

19 Years Of Hit Music -1971

Johnny Magnus 1965

2012-01-13T18:40:00.000-06:00

KMPC was truly represented by AFRTS. I don't know a lot about Johnny Magnus, but here's a 1965 visit. In the picture it's Johnny with RC taken at a Christmas promotion of KMPC.

AFRTS Johnny Magnus 1965

Joe Ferguson 1983

2012-01-12T20:55:00.000-06:00

Time for another visit with Joe Ferguson. In a very cool move the network got jocks from all over the country to records a series of shows. Joe Ferguson was working at KUPL in Portland and brought the hits.

Joe Ferguson 1983

Charlie Tuna 1975

2012-01-11T19:08:00.001-06:00

Charlie Tuna

I just remastered this one. A really nice visit with Charlie with super music and Dickie Goodman!

AFRTS Charlie Tuna 521M

Big Picture: Bringing the World to All of the Troops 1971

2012-01-08T02:51:00.004-06:00

Here's some 1971 video about how we used to do it. This time they visited AFKN. Ed Masters is having a staff meeting at about 16 minutes. In the AFRTS-W segment, that sure looks like Cal Lamartinere

19 Years Of Hit Music - 1970

2012-01-07T21:48:00.001-06:00

Richard Clemons checked in with some information about the show:
Spent several years at Clark. I found this post by searching "19 years of hit music." After I wrote that program in 1974, I changed the name to 'The Hitmakers" in 1975 and rewrote the year end special so it became timeless by name. I also put together "The Golden Age of the Beatles" in 1975 to fill the other 4 hours of the 24 hour program block. I do hear that the program was re-recorded by another announcer. I left Clark in Feb. 1977 but was aware that the "Hitmakers" continued throughout the FEN for many years. I received the Air Force Commendation Medal for those shows. Thanks for the picture and the resurected memories. Richard Clemons, USN Ret.

19 Years Of Hit Music - 1970

Thom does Madrid

2012-01-07T20:05:00.001-06:00

Andoni, my boy Victor and myself

So I'm back from Spain and everything is getting back up to speed. Andoni has a Spanish blog dedicated to American country music ( http://www.escountry.com )and is another Gene Price/Harry Newman fan, going back to the days that they were being broadcast on the airbase in Madrid (Torrejon). Since I was going to be in town I stopped by. He told me he worked at a radio station. That was an understatement. His facility was HUGE. Four huge stations operating out of the same facility, multiple studios capable of most anything. A couple of years ago I visited the Clear Channel setup in the Twin Cities and was underwhelmed. That had a handful of people not enjoying their jobs watching the computers play voicetracking. THIS was like when they used to do it right here.

I couldn't swing a visit to Rota. We covered a lot of ground.

AFRTS to a Dependent

2012-01-07T10:57:00.002-06:00

Karl Bartlett sent in his AFRTS memories:

I’ll start my story at what is (sort of) the beginning. For the record, I’m what’s affectionately known as an “army brat.” I was twelve years old in the summer of 1966 when my family moved from Paris, France, to Athens, Greece. That was around the time I first heard what at the time was called “Armed Forces Radio.” The next five years would prove to be a very special part of my life.

Prior to moving to Greece, I spent three years in Paris, France. I had my own transistor radio, and
grew up listening to French music and news. I knew where all the stations were on the dial, and at what time all the shows came on. That was the beginning of what would become, for better or worse, a life-long obsession.

When we moved to Athens after a brief stay in the States, my faithful transistor radio of course came along for the ride. I went to an American school in Athens, and because of that my French was
and still is much better than my Greek. My radio listening habits changed somewhat, and I discovered
the local AFRTS outlet. Somewhere along the way my parents bought me a shortwave set at the local
PX, and the obsession with radio continued. My memories at this point were being made by AFRTS, Voice of America, as well as the BBC, Radio Luxembourg, Radio Monte-Carlo, and other European super-stations, both on what we call “AM” (it was called “mediumwave” over there) as well as on shortwave.

Sometime in the summer of ’68, I arranged for a “tour” of the AFRTS studios. I was an avid listener
of Athens-A-Gogo, the locally produced show that featured the current hits of the day. I had already
written several letters, one of which was read over the air. (What ever happened to Air Force Sgt. Joe
Wilson?) I asked why they never played any flip sides, and Joe said something about “special” records. Until I actually saw the pressings, I imagined them to be 45-rpm records with a blank side!
Turn the calendar ahead one year, to the summer of ’69. On Saturday mornings at 1000 (I’m going
to use military time, since this is Armed Forces Radio!) there was a local show called TeenScene. After hearing a couple of my classmates on the radio, I decided that, well, why shouldn’t I be doing this? During that summer, I managed to land a part-time summer unpaid “job.” Looking back, I guess it could be considered an internship! My first duties were to file the weekly shipments of records numer-ically by taking a Sharpie and marking those infamous generic brown folders with the disc number; then I had to go trough the enclosed three-by-five cards, and take any titles that already existed and type them up on an existing card; this was a space-saving measure. The idea was to have one card (or two, or three, if necessary,) listing all versions of the same song. The same principle was applied to the artist cards as well. Part of the fun of all this was trying to deal with some of the inconsistencies that popped up from time to time. Enoch Light and the Light Brigade would be filed as “Light, Enoch, and the Light Brigade” or “Light and the Light Brigade, Enoch.” As I write this, I find it rather scary that I actually remember that.

It has always been strictly verboten to play anything over AFRTS airwaves other than officially
sanctioned material, namely, the aforementioned record library. It was permissible to “lift” tunes from
the pre-recorded shows, although this was usually rather tricky, since the DJ’s usually talked over the
beginning and end of any given song. (I will digress quickly here and mention that much of AFRTS
programming at the time was an early form of syndication. Many of the big names in Los Angeles ra-dio recorded special shows for AFRTS, and the shows were shipped, on vinyl, to the stations along with the weekly additions to the library.) The AFRTS-LA jocks would sometimes play material that wasn’t in the station library. I never understood why they could play tunes that we (the locals) couldn’t, but I guess “that’s the way it is.”

One Saturday afternoon that same summer, I was listening to the station, and heard an interesting tune called “Eve of Destruction” by Barry McGuire. The next time I was at the station, the first thing I
did – of course – was look up the song on those infamous index cards. I looked backwards and for-wards, thinking it was somehow misplaced. I would, of course, immediately correct the error! After not finding “Eve of Destruction,” I proceeded to look for the artist. I must have looked for any variation of “McGuire” that I could think of; I may even have looked under “Barry.”

The next time I ran into this particular staffer (he shall remain nameless to protect the innocent as
well as the not-so-innocent) he admitted that he brought the record in from home. It would have been
one thing to bring in a commercial copy of a song that was already in the library – but in those days, at
the height of the Vietnam War, protest songs weren’t exactly welcome by AFRTS brass.

Unfortunately for him, the manager also heard the offending tune. I seem to recall him (the staffer, not the manager) being “re-assigned” to the base post office, and he may or may not have been allowed back, but I can’t recall. I was reminded of this incident years later when the movie Good Morning Vietnam! came out.

Even as a mere teenager, I learned that at AFRTS there were hard and fast rules, and there were certain things that you just didn’t do. As someone once told me, “there was an Adrian Cronauer, and he did say ‘good morning, Vietnam!’ but he didn’t do half the crap Robin Williams did in the movie.”
Sometime in the fall of 1970, TeenScene needed a new host, a student from the area, since this was
not a paying position. Naturally, I applied for the “job.” However, the station wanted to keep an appearance of fairness, and since I was connected with the station, management did give me the position, but I was given a co-host, a girl from the same American school I attended. We essentially
tried to be as famous as Athens-A-Gogo, which at this point was hosted by Air Force Sgt. David Hart.
(Thanks, Dave, wherever you are!) TeenScene lasted about six months, after which point it was canceled for reasons still unknown (to me, anyway.)

We left Greece and headed back stateside in the summer of ’71, and unfortunately my association
with AFRTS came to an untimely end. Maybe that small little station at the Hellenikon Air Base was
never a major player in the AFRTS fleet, but it was to me.

It’s strange. Today we have the capability of putting the entire AFRTS music library on a flash drive
no bigger than a human finger. We can hear all of latest tunes on YouTube the very same day they are
released. Back in the “good old days” a number of songs that were hits in the States never made it to

AFRTS, either because of musical content, licensing issues, or any number of other reasons. We can
listen to stations from almost anywhere in the world without having to string an antenna across the
back yard, and they even sound better too! It’s strange, but even with all the technology that’s available today, the magic has disappeared. Those were the days, my friend; We thought they’d never end...

Happy Birthday AFRTS

2011-12-19T21:27:00.002-06:00

Finally it's done! Thanks to all. It's quite a story. Happy 70th Birthday AFRTS!

Happy Birthday AFRTS

If you'd like a 441k uncompressed wav of this let me know. Rebroadcast is encouraged, if you do then please let me know. afrts@live.com

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