Reveille with Beverly

One of the unintended, perhaps unimaginable and certainly unexpected, consequences of American participation in World War II was the spread worldwide of American popular culture, in particular music, which has retained its influence ever since, cementing America's cultural dominance, but also American accents, idioms and lively slang, which most of the world had never heard.  And that music!  Who had heard anything like it before? Rocking clarinets, jiving coronets, wailing trumpets, swinging trombones and boogie-woogie pianos. Solid senders all!

This happened through the creation of the Armed Forces Radio Service, which set up AM broadcast stations in 54 countries, from Egypt to New Guinea, Australia to England, as well as making shortwave broadcasts that reached everywhere on earth, all filling the airwaves 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.  The purpose of the network was to be a morale booster for American troops overseas, most of whom were young, in their teens and twenties, so it broadcast the popular music of the day, swing and jazz from Tommy Dorsey, Cab Calloway, Glen Miller and Louis Armstrong, as well as comedy skits, radio plays and news of the home front.

Jean Ruth, aka Beverly of the Reveille.

The most popular AFRS  show with the GIs was "Reveille with Beverly," hosted by Jean Ruth, the world's first global disc jockey and the inventor of the listener-request format. Her broadcast was heard from Alaska to New Guinea, South Africa to Scotland and in all the ships at sea and planes in the air. Her show became so popular a movie was made about it.

When she was a 22-year-old student at the University of Colorado, Ruth convinced a local radio station to let her host a program aimed at draftees at local army camps. Shortly after she went on the air the Japs attacked Pearl Harbor and her show, first called "Beverly at Reveille," became hugely popular and was picked up by KNX in Los Angeles, then by Armed Forces Radio when the service was created in 1942.  Besides being broadcast in the States over AM radio and world-wide on shortwave, her program was recorded on big aluminum 78rpm disks able to handle an hour broadcast and flown to local AFRS stations around the world. So the program she recorded on Monday morning in Los Angeles would be heard in Nadzab, New Guinea, Foggia, Italy, and Framlingham, England, Tuesday morning.

Between 1941 and 1945, Ruth’s dawn broadcast reached an estimated 11 million allied servicemen daily, not to mention any number of foreign civilians. Her jumping and jiving show was even sometimes used as a replacement for the dawn bugle call that traditionally jarred troops out of their racks. Instead, they could wake up to some hot licks from Woody Herman as Jean would lilt, "Preach your sermon, Herman!"

After the first opening tune, Ruth would begin her show with her signature opening, “Heya, fellas, it's the USA. We’re ready with the stuff that makes you swing and sway."

Ruth posed for cute pin-up shots that she autographed and mailed to the boys overseas. Army Air Force crews voted her “The girl we’d most like to be trapped in the turret of a B-17 with.”

Armed Forces Radio (and long since Television, too, so AFRTS) is still going strong, reaching 168 countries worldwide these days, although it was renamed American Forces rather than Armed Forces in 2017.  I used to listen to it growing up as a Navy brat living overseas, especially in Japan -- Far East Network, Tokyo, 810 on your dial! -- but FEN was disestablished a while back and the service is now called American Forces Network Tokyo.

From the beginning AFRS has had a shadow audience of foreigners who listen to the

Those crazy AFRS boys! They made a movie of this -- Godzilla!

broadcasts.  I recall reading some years ago that FEN Tokyo had an audience of American servicemen numbered in the thousands while the number of Japanese nationals listening  was about a million and a half.  The mayor of Tokyo reportedly once complained that FEN played too much rock and roll and should play more classical music. The head of FEN responded that the station's audience was American servicemen, average age 19, who were away from home for the first time, in a strange foreign country, and the role of FEN was to provide something familiar to them, and play the music that they liked and had listened to at home. 

I can remember as a kid listening to the little spots FEN had scattered throughout its programs, rather like ads would be on a commercial radio station.  I think some of them must have been quite old, maybe decades.  Of course, they had up-to-date items as well, but these others were the ones I looked forward to listening to.  I learned how and when the time zones were established in the US, about the Pony Express, the Kentucky rifle, Sergeant York and Robert Smalls, and all sorts of people, events and things in one-minute featurettes. 

There was also a series of one-minute spots about different small towns and cities across the US, telling what they were like, mentioning local streets and stores and what was going on there (or had been a long time ago).  I still remember the ending sentence, which said, "But if you are from (Hometown), you already know this; we just wanted to remind you that it's still there."  That ending just so charmed me, and I wanted to visit each one of those small towns.

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Photos of Jean Ruth's first radio show when it was still in Colorado from an early 1942 issue of Life magazine.

An episode of Reveille with Beverly.
It's a solid killer! Stomp your feet as you listen to Artie Shaw give!
I hear ya talkin', man!  What goes?  Get in that jump groove! Rock it!

If you liked that episode, enjoy a romp and stomp session with another hour of Beverly putting the needle in the groove and spinning those hot licks and mellow melodies.  It's coming to you but fast!