[vetvetdoug]

From 58’ to 63’ the only way to hear Country Music was on AFR from 4am to 6am. My Father was an aircraft mechanic at Yokota on the RB-57’s and had to get up early and I'd get up with him just so we could listen to Lefty, Hank, Johnny Horton and others.

[Fiji Hill]

From 58’ to 63’ the only way to hear Country Music was on AFR from 4am to 6am. My Father was an aircraft mechanic at Yokota on the RB-57’s and had to get up early and I'd get up with him just so we could listen to Lefty, Hank, Johnny Horton and others.

When I was in Germany in 1965-1966, the Armed Forces Network radio station in Frankfurt played mostly Adult Contemporary (AC)music, featuring the likes of Jack Jones, Peggy Lee, Mel Torme and Connie Francis, who had switched to AC after Beatlemania had driven her off the Top 40 charts. There were also shows featuring Hawaiian music, polkas, and Jim Pewter's Oldies show on weekends that set off my lifelong interest in music from the 1950s. By the way, Dick Sinclair, who hosted the Polka Party show, became a conservative commentator in his later years. I don't recall hearing any country-western music.

However, we teenagers were starving for Top 40 music, but there was none whatsoever. We had to go to the American snack bar and listen to whatever new hits were available on the juke box.

When I returned to Germany in 1971, AC was history and Top 40 ruled the Armed Forces Network. I kept up with the charts on the AFN station at Kaiserslautern, which the Americans called K-Town and the Germans called Lautern.