Category: Arthur B. Church

A-G Musical Grocers, pt. 1

On By Ryan EllettIn A.G. Musical Grocers, Arthur B. Church, Associated Grocers, Associated Wholesale Grocers, Gomer Cool, KMBCLeave a comment

Researching old-time radio programs can be a feast-or-famine endeavor. Due to the happenstance of history, we as a hobby are blessed with abundant documentation about some areas of the broadcasting industry during radio’s Golden Age but absolutely nothing about other areas of that radio era. Fortunately, Arthur B. Church, the founder of Kansas City’s CBS-affiliate KMBC, was quite thorough in holding on to station records and documents for decades, from the station’s beginnings in the mid-1920s to its sale in the early 1950s.

Radio historians are further fortunate that Church, instead of destroying the records upon his retirement, decided to hold on to them and eventually donate them to a university library that was willing to preserve them for decades. This has allowed us fans of the era to do in-depth research and writing about the original programming of a mid-size market station, an unusual feat in contrast to the national and regional network programming that has been a bit easier to document.

An example of the shows into which the KMBC archives allow a modern insight is A.G. Musical Grocers, a daily (except Sundays) series that aired over the station in 1934 from Thursday April 12 to Wednesday July 11 for a total of 78 episodes. Interestingly, this was the third series in as many years that bore the Musical Grocers title, the earlier two possibly serving as a level of inspiration for the third. In 1932 CBS broadcast a weekly series The Musical Grocer starring Irving Kaufman, and in 1933 NBC aired The Musical Grocery Store featuring Tom Howard, Jeannie Lang, Tiny Ruffner, and Billy Best.

In the KMBC series the “A.G.” stood for Associated Grocers, a group of independent grocers in Kansas City who in 1924 banded together to protect their market share against the larger chain grocers. By combining their orders from product manufacturers and storing their respective goods at a single location, the independent stores could get more competitive pricing in line with the chains. One hundred years later the organization continues on as Associated Wholesale Grocers.

In 1934 the Associated Grocers approached KMBC about designing a program to promote aligned stores and specific products they wanted to advertise on a given day. The result was the quarter-hour A-G (or A.G.) Musical Grocers. In an inter-office memo written by station writer-singer-actor Gomer Cool (profiled here) described the program as “a combination of music, comedy, and intensive selling.”

Texas Rangers Promotional Portfolio

On By Ryan EllettIn Arthur B. Church, Kansas City Radio, KMBC, Texas Rangers (music band), UncategorizedLeave a comment

I am always on the lookout for memorabilia for Kansas City’s KMBC from the Arthur B. Church era, 1920s to about 1953 when he sold it. I was beyond thrilled to win this item on Ebay earlier this year. Some background on this item. The University of Missour – Kansas City has some of the Arthur B. Church KMBC archival material. In their collection are six of these oversize promotional portfolios for different series and artists that the station tried to sell on a transcription basis with mixed results. You can view scans of these portfolios here on the left-hand side of the page.

This is a seventh portfolio that is different from those in the UMKC collection though its content is the Texas Rangers who are also the featured content of the two above-linked portfolios “Gentlemen in the White Hats” and “Life on the Red Horse Ranch.”

These portfolios appear to each be unique items created by KMBC ca. 1940. Each one contains photographs, telegrams, letters, and blown up copies of trade magazine reviews. As you can see, these items are all glued to the pages so each portfolio appears to be a prototype that would then be copied and distributed to potential sponsors. In years of looking through different KMBC archives I have never seen a replica of these portfolios so I suspect either they never moved beyond the prototype phase or they were only used for in-person promotions. They are in such good condition, however, that I can’t imagine they were handled much.

Because of the location of this item’s seller I believe this portfolio likely came from the Arthur B. Church family at some point; why it was not donated with the other materials is unknown.

There is no new information in this piece that is not in my book on the Texas Rangers but the pictures sure would have been a priceless addition to it. At least they can be viewed here, better late than never.

Here is the cover; I can’t tell which member of the band that might be.

IMG_4534