Country

“Country Music” told me what I heard! I was raised in northeastern Pennsylvania on station WGBI, pop and Polish music, until World War II. In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean we would listen to V discs, 78s playing light classical over the ship’s publicaddress system. Suddenly the concert would be interrupted by a radio man’s “eee-yah!” Loud and sometimes clear, WWVA West-b’God Virginia would blare country. Half the ship felt at home, the other half enjoyed a musical visit to that home.

For many of the men aboard, the most memorable event of World War II was Roy Acuff’s performance in Norfolk, Virginia. It attracted the biggest crowd I’d ever seen outside a ball park. My favorite? Bob Wills. Like “Rose of Old San’ Tone,” good country still lives “within my heart.”