The early 1940s were not an easy time for the music industry. First, in December 1940 ASCAP took on radio broadcasters, demanding higher licensing fees, so radio stations dropped all ASCAP music for over 10 months. Then in December 1941 the U.S. entered the war and it became significantly harder for musicians to tour and bands to stay together. Finally, in August 1942, in a dispute with record companies over the use of recorded music on radio, the notoriously imperious and appropriately-christened president of the American Federation of Musicians, James Caesar Petrillo called a strike, banning all AFM members from recording new music. One result of the ban was the V-Disc, a special project of the Army’s Special Service Division. In October 1943, Petrillo was convinced to make an exception for the sake of the war effort, allowing musicians to make recordings for troops overseas. Almost immediately the V-Discs began to be shipped out, and the program continued, alongside the AFRS’ radio transcription discs, into 1949, resulting in 900 discs containing 2,345 tunes featuring a lot of great music that, due to the AFM ban, was never recorded commercially in the States.