[78-L] BREAKING NEWS, OR BRAKING NEWS!

[Benno Häupl]

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All I can see are the P-Series discs. P for Popular. 
There was also W for Western (or C&W) 
And C for Classical. 

Of course, all material on these 16 inchers was taken from published records. So, 
nothing there is really rare. 

The W series is certainly interesting, especially the numbers starting at about W-800 to 
about W-2500 (when the dreadful 'Nashville sound' started to dominate the airwaves). 
The W-series included many obscure recordings taken from small regional labels. 

The P-Series, as from about P-2500 (IIRC), is interesting for all the top 100 hits, 
although there were quite a few songs in the U.S. Top 20 that were never pressed on 
the AFRTS P series. I always wondered, were they banned for their content, or was 
it due to some legal rights? 

For about two years I worked at AFN Berlin (Germany) and helped the DJ who was 
in charge of the Country & Westren afternoon show, because he did not know anything 
about that type of music (while I was publishing the German magazine for Country 
and Western Music and was able to select a good mix of tracks). 

In the 1990s, when AFN had been closed in Germany, I asked Mark White, formerly 
Program Director of AFN Berlin, where all the records had gone. He said that they sent 
them to the Library of Congress. 

Occasionally you find some AFRTS records on the Bay. Currently seller rands1498 has 
about 188 such records for sale. 

Benno