Remembering V-E day and the music that carried the soldiers through WWII

Seventy years ago today, bells of celebration rang across Europe on V-E Day, marking the final allied victory over Nazi Germany. But before the bells of victory rang out, the U.S. military relied on another kind of music to encourage the troops. Music from back home was recorded and sent overseas on Victory Discs, or V-Discs.

The government produced V-Discs specifically for the entertainment of troops overseas. The recordings were not commercially available in the U.S.

The earliest V-Disc recordings were mostly military-march music, but then a turn of events brought big stars such as Bing Crosby, Judy Garland, and the Count Basie Orchestra to the microphones.

“There was a strike that the musicians had against the recording companies,” explained Don Kennedy, long-time host of the syndicated radio program Big Band Jump. “A guy named George Robert Vincent, who was a lieutenant at the time, convinced James C. Petrillo, who was president of the musicians union, that the musicians under his banner could record free for the United States Army and then later the Navy, and they would put out V-discs.”

No one was allowed to record commercially because of the strike, but musicians could record for the troops.

Making a recording was one thing; getting it to the troops was something else. Recordings had to be transported thousands of miles—often in very difficult conditions on the last legs of the journey—without breaking. This was in the days when records were made of easily breakable shellac.

So the War Department decided to use vinyl, which later became the industry standard for recordings. And there was another innovation: V-Discs were 12 inches in diameter, rather than the standard 10 inches, so they could include more music. The 12-inch size was a precursor to the long-playing album that was developed commercially in the 1950s.

But technology wasn’t the most interesting thing about V-Discs. It was the music, Kennedy said.

“You’ve got to remember the troops overseas were kids. … And Judy Garland was very nice to them. Jo Stafford and Judy and all the big bands, Woody Herman, particularly, gave of their time, absolutely, positively, unequivocally free, and they did it with joy and involvement,” Kennedy said.

Following the Allied victory in World War II, the V-Disc program came to an end. Because of the previous agreement between the War Department and Petrillo, all V-Disc master recordings and all the discs themselves, about 8 million of them, were ordered destroyed.

“But, as always happens, some guys sneaked them away and were able to keep them,” Kennedy said. “There are still some around, and the Library of Congress has a full set. But, by and large, they’ve become very rare.”