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GI JANE ...GI JIVE

koopkooper

Practically Family
Messages
610
Location
Sydney Australia
Hey there,
just been watchin the doco "Colour of War" and they played a bit of a female DJ caled GI Jane and her show was called GI Jive, anyone know anything about it??
 

LizzieMaine

Bartender
Messages
32,962
Location
Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
This was a program produced by the Armed Forces Radio Service in Hollywood beginning in 1943, and continuing thru the war years, for distribution on disc to service personnel overseas. It was a disc-jockey type of program with "Jill" playing popular record hits of the day, and filling requests sent in by listeners. Jill was actually Martha Wilkerson, whose husband Robert Warner was a producer for the Office of War Information and came up with the idea for the program and its format.

Jill had a very engaging, friendly personality, and was very popular with the troops as an antidote to the propaganda gals of German and Japanese radio.
 

koopkooper

Practically Family
Messages
610
Location
Sydney Australia
thanks for that

Hey Lizzie,
I had a feeling you'd have the information, I must say as a radio DJ myself, she has a wonderful voice and personality, very warm and really captures the "American Female Voice" of the time.
Great idea, do you know if any of the records have been produced for sale?
Would love to here them in there entirety.
 

koopkooper

Practically Family
Messages
610
Location
Sydney Australia
Hey Nick,
I'd normally pm you on something like this, but it seems you don't have PM. Anyway, I was wondering if I could grab a copy of one of her shows from you collection. Perhaps we could do a swap if there is something you are interested in that I might have. I've got a great collection of Aussie radio shows from the 30's and forties that might interest you. Anyway, pm me or drop me a line koopkooper@hotmail.com
 

nick1909

Registered User
Messages
28
Location
The US
Always glad to lend a hand when I can.
I have always loved programs produced for AFRS. Command Performance, Mail Call, Jubille, GI Jive...
Any word on Reveille With Beverly out there?

reveillewithbeverlynosecf2.jpg
 

Flitcraft

One Too Many
Messages
1,037
That's pretty cool!
A facet of WWII that I didn't know anything about- thanks for the posts!
 

LizzieMaine

Bartender
Messages
32,962
Location
Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
A few years back, a fellow who was working on a book about Beverly got in touch with me looking for any existing airchecks of her work, but I had to tell him I wasn't aware of any existing -- hers was strictly a local Los Angeles program, and if any recordings were ever made, they were either lost or destroyed -- the unfortunate fate of far too much vintage-era radio, especially local programs.
 

LizzieMaine

Bartender
Messages
32,962
Location
Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
AFRS was broadcast on a wide range of ad-hoc stations scattered around areas where the American military was active overseas. None of these broadcasts were intendent to be received stateside, but it's certainly possible a patient homefront DX fan might have picked them up.

One thing I've looked for for many years without success is a genuine aircheck of an actual WW2-era AFRS broadcast. There are hundreds of thousands of surviving pressed transcription discs of AFRS programs, but I know of no surviving off-the-air recordings of any actual AFRS transmissions from the period.

Later on, AFRS took to relaying its programming overseas by shortwave, and these transmissions were easily picked up by listeners all over the world. But during the war era, most of the programming was aired from transcriptions that had to be packed up and shipped to each individual station -- which explains why so many of the surviving discs are beat to a frazzle. There would have been live news inserts on each station by local military announcers, along with station continuity, but none of this WW2-era material is known to exist.

As to other disc jockey material, it does exist, but it's very rare, and it was usually preserved only by chance. I have a number of examples of DJ-type programming from small stations in Brooklyn dating to 1936, transferred to tape from discs made by the FCC, which was dealing with a time-sharing dispute among several stations assigned to a single frequency. The DJs themselves are quite a bit far from dynamic personalities -- just dry-voiced smalltime local announcers, who make no attempt to be flamboyant -- but the music is interesting, running the gamut from old dance band records dating back as far as 1930 to more current swing hits to hard-core blues records to tearjerking country ballads to classical and concert records, all thrown together without much rhyme or reason.

The earliest fragment of a DJ-type program that exists is a clip, only a few seconds long, dating to 1931, with an unidentified Chicago announcer introducing a "phonograph record by Phil Napoleon and his Orchestra." This announcer has a bit more personality than the Brooklyn guys, but not by much.
 

CharlieH.

One Too Many
Messages
1,169
Location
It used to be Detroit....
Very interesting! I'm not surprised that there's not much surviving prewar DJ material, considering that live radio shows were not actually meant to be preserved, let alone broadcasts of commercial records.
 

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