Red China Promotes American Country Music

—“That New Sound from Nashville” by Charles Portis, from the February 12, 1966, issue of The Saturday Evening Post

Country and Western music didn’t get off the ground nationally until World War II, when the northern boys and city boys got strong doses of it in barracks and on decks and in southern camp towns. Some of the city boys developed a tolerance for it, a few even came to like it. In 1944 the USO polled GIs in Europe to determine the most popular singer and, lo, Roy Acuff’s name led all the rest.

It was much the same in Korea. There were few rifle companies in that war without a wind-up record player and a well-worn 78 rpm record of Hank Williams’s “Lovesick Blues.” The Chinese even used the music in an attempt to make the American troops homesick, or maybe it was their idea of torture. For whatever reason, they set up giant speakers and boomed ditties like “You Are My Sunshine” across the valleys in the long watches of the night.

This article is featured in the January/February 2026 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Subscribe to the magazine for more art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives.