Planet Vintage presents
For twenty years the largest music venue in the world was a wire. Bands played ballrooms with a network line hung over the bandstand; the Armed Forces Radio Service pressed jazz onto discs and shipped them to every outpost the Army held; sponsors paid standing orchestras to fill an hour a week. What is held here is the surviving audio of that trade — public domain only, or works of the United States government, which carry no copyright anywhere. Nothing under a Creative Commons or non-commercial licence is kept in this wing.
1,154
Recordings
20
Series held
217h
Listening
1932–1955
Years covered
A microphone hung over the bandstand
Hotel and ballroom line checks, sustaining hours and air shots of the bands that defined the swing era. These are performances nobody was recording for sale, which is exactly why they sound like the room.
1938–1954 · Network sustaining lines
Late-night line checks from Glen Island Casino, the Coconut Grove and Storyville, taken off the network sustaining feed.
The dance-band remote was the cheapest programming in American radio and, in hindsight, the most valuable: a microphone hung in a ballroom and an announcer reading the room.
29 recordings
1939–1944 · CBS / AFRS
Broadcast survivals of the most popular dance band in America, and then of the service band Miller took to England.
Miller ran the tightest radio operation of any bandleader: timed to the second, arranged for the microphone rather than the room.
100 recordings
1935–1946 · NBC / CBS
Air checks of the band that started the swing era on a late-night network hour nobody expected anyone to hear.
Let's Dance went out too late for the east and just right for California, which is the accident that made swing a national music.
90 recordings
1937–1946 · NBC / AFRS
The sentimental gentleman's broadcasts, including the hours with a young singer named Sinatra out front.
Dorsey's radio band is the sound of a working orchestra under deadline — the arrangements tighter on air than on record.
90 recordings
1932–1946 · Network remotes / AFRS
Ellington's surviving broadcast material, where the band stretches past the three-minute limit of the record side.
Radio is where Ellington's orchestra could play at length. What the 78 could not hold, the wire carried.
90 recordings
1937–1946 · Network remotes / AFRS
Broadcast survivals of the Basie band in its first decade, from club remotes and service transcriptions.
The Basie band was built for the room and the airwave rather than the studio, which is why the remotes swing harder than the sides.
70 recordings
1938–1945 · Network remotes / AFRS
Shaw on the air across the swing years and then in uniform in the Pacific.
Shaw quit the business twice while broadcasting steadily through it — the air checks catch him at both ends.
70 recordings
1935–1950 · WNEW New York
The programme that invented the disc jockey: a ballroom that never existed, assembled from records between commercials.
Block conjured a ballroom out of shellac while the musicians' union insisted records had no place on the air. The format outlived the argument.
33 recordings
Pressed for the services, sold to nobody
AFRS transcription discs: jazz, country and fifteen-minute singer sessions made for men overseas. As works of the United States government they carry no copyright anywhere, and they preserve performances the commercial labels never took.
1943–1945 · Armed Forces Radio Service
Fifteen minutes of records for men overseas, hosted at various times by GI Jill and a rotating cast of guest disc jockeys.
AFRS pressed G.I. Jive on transcription discs and shipped them everywhere the Army was. A work of the United States government — no copyright, anywhere.
120 recordings
1944–1946 · Armed Forces Radio Service
The AFRS jazz series, with studio bands and small groups recorded for overseas distribution only.
Because these were made for the services and never sold, they preserve performances the commercial labels never took.
57 recordings
1943–1955 · Armed Forces Radio Service
The service's own library of music programmes, pressed for stations that had no network of their own.
The Basic Music Library was radio infrastructure: shelves of discs so an outpost transmitter could run a full day of music.
80 recordings
1943–1946 · Armed Forces Radio Service
A single artist, a small group and no audience — the most intimate thing AFRS made.
Personal Album was built to sound like the singer was in the room, because the men listening were a long way from any room they knew.
70 recordings
1944–1948 · Armed Forces Radio Service
The service's country hour, with the barn-dance bands the networks kept at arm's length.
Country music travelled overseas on AFRS discs before it travelled on network radio at home.
31 recordings
The sponsored hour
Standing orchestras, weekly showcases and the best-appointed variety hours on the network — the institution that paid American musicians a wage between the wars.
1936–1949 · NBC
The best-appointed music variety hour on American radio, casual by design and rehearsed to the second.
Crosby's Music Hall taught radio how to sound unhurried. He later broke the network's live rule to tape it, which changed broadcasting.
47 recordings
1932–1951 · NBC / CBS
Light concert music played by a standing radio orchestra for a sponsor that wanted calm.
The Contented Hour is the sound of the radio orchestra as an institution: staff players, staff arrangers, week after week.
17 recordings
1940–1944 · NBC Blue
A mock-scholarly programme that put Dinah Shore, Lena Horne and Henry Levine's Dixieland band on network radio.
The joke was the frame; the music was serious. It is one of the few network hours that treated jazz as repertoire.
31 recordings
1938–1946 · NBC
A weekly showcase that rotated the touring orchestras through one studio and one sponsor.
The Bandwagon is a survey of American dance music taken in real time — whoever was drawing crowds that month played it.
43 recordings
Sunday morning
The choirs, congregations and string bands that reached the network from outside it: Cleveland, Long Beach and Chicago rather than New York.
1937–1947 · CBS
The first national network programme produced by Black Americans: a choir, a sermon and a commentary on the country.
Wings Over Jordan carried gospel and civil-rights argument to a national audience every Sunday morning for a decade.
12 recordings
1937–1950 · Mutual
Congregational hymn singing broadcast from the Long Beach Municipal Auditorium to the largest religious audience in radio.
Fuller bought his network time outright, which is why the programme sounds like a room rather than a studio.
31 recordings
1933–1950 · NBC / WLS Chicago
The Saturday-night programme that took string bands, gospel quartets and novelty acts to a network audience.
Before Nashville there was Chicago: the Barn Dance is where country music first met a national microphone.
43 recordings
