Category: Gomer Cool

A-G Musical Grocers, pt. 2

On By Ryan EllettIn A.G. Musical Grocers, Beverly Hillbillies, Eddie Edwards, Gomer Cool, Happy Hollow, Herb Kratoska, Joanne Taylor's Fashion Flashes, KMBC, Life on the Red Horse Ranch, Paul Henning, Paul Sells, Texas Rangers (music band)Leave a comment

            The series revolved around two main characters, Al Short and George Tracy (A and G) who owned an A-G store in the fictional Maple Grove. Al was played by Gomer Cool and George by Paul Henning, the show’s writer. Henning would eventually go on to write at the network level make his name in television as the creator of The Beverly Hillbillies. Cool related that Al and George “greet the customers – sell them the various A-G specials just as any grocer would do.” Utilizing their singing talents, Cool and Henning would “sing praises of their A-G store and its products.” The duo parodied popular tunes of the day, rewriting lyrics to focus on Associated Grocers products and sales.

            Al and George were joined by Olaf, the meat cutter’s assistant. Paul Sells, simultaneously a member of KMBC’s Texas Rangers and later musician for Gene Autry, voiced the Swede and pitched in with some accordian music, even adding his baritone on occasion. Stock boy Elmer Jones, the slow but loveable town inventor, was played by Herb Kratoska (also concurrently a member of the musical Texas Rangers) who added guitar when required. The final core character as Flash, a Black delivery boy who provided comic relief. Portrayed by Eddie Edwards, Flash was one of several Black characters Edwards played on different KMBC series, among them “Cookie” on Life on Red Horse Ranch, “George Washington White” on Happy Hollow, and “Sam” on Joanne Taylor’s Fashion Flashes.

            Other KMBC actors passed through Maple Grove playing various customers, among them Mrs. Straightlace, “the town reformer,” Mrs. Gabriel (Gabby), who never stopped talking, and Mr. Gardiner, a newlywed, Grandma Perkins, Freddy Finch, Dr. Ford, Mrs. Murphy, Mr. Weston, and Miss O’Neil.

            Henning daily wrote specific goods into the script that A.G. Stores would then have on specials that same day. These same goods were advertised in the daily newspapers as well. Given the unfortunate lack of surviving scripts, modern fans can only surmise how goods such as Derby Chili, Lakeside Vegetables, and Aines California Cottage Cheese were deftly woven into the “fast moving, jolly” storyline which supposedly carried “a thread of human interest from day to day.”

            Despite the future success of so many of its cast, Musical Grocers wasn’t the sales driver for which A.G. Stores hoped and the series said “Auf Weidersehen” on July 11, 1934. There is no indication in extant KMBC records that they attempted to revive the series with a different sponsor.

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.”

Pioneers of the Air: African-American Kansans on Early Radio, Pt. 8

On By Ryan EllettIn Gomer Cool, Kansas Radio, Roy Glenn, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Like his contemporary Ruby Dandridge, Roy Glenn was both a Kansas native and prolific actor on network radio during the 1940s and 1950s. Glenn was born June 3, 1914 in Pittsburgh, KS, but his family moved to Los Angeles when he was six. He was cast in various stage performances during the 1930s and in later years claimed that he made his first radio appearances during this time as well, starring on the bi-racial The Gilmore Gasoline Show in 1936. Records indicate this was his only work on the medium until 1946 when he earned a part on The Amos ‘n’ Andy Show. He was one of several black radio actors that was cast on this show and, later, Beulah. There is no evidence that Glenn ever had long-running roles as did Ruby Dandridge. However, as a journeyman actor he is credited with parts on some of old time radio’s most popular and fondly remembered series.19

Glenn’s radio-ography is headlined by guest appearances on The Jack Benny Show, a perennially top-rated radio comedy program during the 1940s and early 1950s. He earned spots on eight broadcasts of Suspense, a weekly anthology series which ran from 1942 until 1962 and attracted Hollywood headliners for the lead parts. No less impressive are seven appearances on Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, a private-eye program which aired between 1949 and 1962. He joined Cary Grant on a broadcast of the marquee series Lux Radio Theatre. Mystery shows were a good fit for Glenn’s voice talents and, in addition to Johnny Dollar, he was cast at times in Richard Diamond, Private Detective (1949 – 1953), which featured Dick Powell in the title role, and in The Adventures of Ellery Queen (1947 – 1948). Glenn’s resume could also boast of appearances on Pete Kelly’s Blues, featuring Jack Webb of Dragnet fame (1951), Crime Classics (1953 – 1954), and Rocky Jordan (1945 – 1947), co-written, incidentally, by Gomer Cool who broke into radio on Kansas City’s KMBC. During the heyday of Glenn’s radio work from the mid 1940s to the mid 1950s his talent landed him on individual episodes of the police show Broadway is My Beat (1949 – 1954), Tales of the Texas Rangers, a western, (1950 – 1952), the experimental CBS Radio Workshop (1956 – 1957), Romance (1943 – 1957), and Hallmark Hall of Fame (1948 – 1953).20

With the demise of dramatic radio in the early 1960s Glenn transitioned to television and continued with film roles, his most prominent parts coming in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and A Raisin in the Sun. He died prematurely of a heart attack in 1971 at the age of 56.

Kansas may not be able to claim the radio heritage of states such as New York or California, but the early accomplishments of African-American Kansans in the field are an area in which the state may be proud. From the efforts of Sumner High School staff to get students engaged in the emerging wireless technology to George Hamilton’s daily broadcasts in 1925 to the dramatic roles of Roy Glenn in the mid-1950s, black Kansans had a steady presence on the nation’s airwaves.

Texas Rangers Promotional Portfolio pg. 7

On By Ryan EllettIn Bob Crawford (KMBC), Gomer Cool, Kansas City Radio, KMBC, Paul Sells, Texas Rangers (music band), UncategorizedLeave a comment

Don’t let the costumes fool you! None of the Texas Rangers hailed from Texas nor is there any documentation to suggest any of them cowboys or Westerners by any stretch of the imagination. Paul Sells came from Lima, Ohio, and several of the earliest members including both Gomer Cool and Bob Crawford were natives of northwestern Missouri.

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Texas Rangers Promotional Portfolio pg. 4

On By Ryan EllettIn Gomer Cool, Kansas City Radio, KMBC, Paul Sells, Texas Rangers (music band), UncategorizedLeave a comment

As mentioned in the Texas Rangers book, none of the original Rangers musicians were actually country – or hillbilly, as the genre was frequently called at the time – musicians. Accordianist Paul Sells had had his own nightclub orchestra and fiddler Gomer Cool was classically trained. They practiced a lot to get a more Western sound but their repertoire over the years was very diverse, with ballads, spirituals, hymns, folk, and even patriotic tunes finding a spot in their recorded catalog.

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