Let's Do It by Bob Stanley

Author:Bob Stanley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2022-09-06T00:00:00+00:00

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In early 1942 the US government rationed record production. The simple reason was that 78s were made of shellac, and the biggest supplier of shellac in the world was Burma, now occupied by the Japanese; any remaining stocks were to be requisitioned by the military. Record companies had to think on their feet and announced that they would pay for any unwanted records, even if they were chipped or cracked, so they could recycle the shellac. Heaven knows how many rarities were lost this way.

The armed forces, though, could still obtain strange hybrid records called V Discs. The ‘V’ was presumably for ‘victory’, though it could have been for ‘vinylite’VIII or possibly ‘Vincent’. Bob Vincent was a five-foot-four army captain who, after lobbying the Pentagon, convinced Army Special Services that music would boost morale and that they should press records expressly for the troops abroad. During World War I record companies had discovered that soldiers didn’t particularly want to be sent blatantly patriotic songs; Talking Machine World had written in 1918 that ‘Rag is the rage… a rag, or at least a song with some syncopation, that is what the boys always ask for.’ So the V Disc was all about popular music, the very best available. It would be used to remind the troops of their friends back home and the towns, soda shops and ballrooms they were fighting for. All fees and profits were waived; government money paid for the recordings, which got around the AFM strike.

V Discs played at 78 rpm but were twelve-inch records rather than the usual ten, and were made of, for the most part, unbreakable vinyl. From 1943 until the immediate post-war period they would be shipped to conflict zones in boxes of twenty-five, along with hand-cranked record players. Bob Vincent was the director of production, and he delegated the selection of the music to half a dozen people, including George T. Simon, editor of Metronome magazine. ‘A lot of the recordings were taken from the air, from broadcasts, or the record companies gave us permission to reissue things that the guys had, like Artie Shaw’s “Begin the Beguine”,’ remembered Simon. ‘The really great thing about V Discs was the fresh material they couldn’t possibly hear any place else [because of the AFM strike].’ V Discs also gave musicians a rare opportunity to go into the studio during the strike. Many of them worked for nothing: not just out of patriotism, but because of the opportunity – they hadn’t had a chance to cut a record, get their message across, be creative, in months or even years. Simon relished the opportunity, and made Vincent sound like a pretty fun boss: ‘This little captain who was in charge of V Discs said, “Just record them wherever you want, whenever you want, as long as you can get them for free.” Well, I talked to Goodman, I talked to Woody [Herman], I talked to Harry James… Louis Armstrong did a fantastic session. It was a ball for me.

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