Established by the Army Service Forces Special Services Division in October 1943 as a means of providing American armed forces throughout the world with "the latest and best in popular songs and marches, [and] the finest classical, concert, military, sacred, folk and patriotic music", the V-DISC program produced 900 discs containing 2,345 tunes through 1949, when the program terminated. Because of the American Federation of Musician's strike from 1942-44, which forbade AFM members from working with Stateside record labels, many of the V-Disc recordings are the earliest and in some cases the ONLY recordings we have of many early '40s compositions and performances.