Humbard Family Radio Favorites

The first print reference I found to the Humbard family was in the Indianapolis Times, September 5th, 1949. The Humbard family was performing at 4:30 PM on 1260 WFBM. I didn't immediately connect them to the evangelist Rex Hubbard. I'll circle back to that in a moment. I had found a Humbard Family hymnal which was notably hefty compared to most radio hymnals, with 201 pages of mostly Stamps-Baxter hymns. A highly unusual book, the music is all in shapenote musical notation. It bore no date, but the individual hymns have copyright dates. The latest of these are from 1945.  I corroborated dates at Hymnary.org. (They need to update their SSL certificate)  Anyway, I'd put publication of the hymnal shortly thereafter, probably in 1946-ish. The interior of the cover states "features on ABC and Mutual networks." The NBC Blue Network became the ABC network in 1943 so that tracks.

Interestingly the Humbards didn't seem to publish much of their own music. They seemed to be primarily live performers. In the Radio Favorites hymnal there are zero originals. Most of the music is by Albert E. Brumley a prolific 20th century, shape note music composer. Almost every hymn in the book is under Virgil O. Stamps publishing.  Their earlier work, the 1939 hymnal,  Humbard Family Songs, only sports three originals (below). I have not found information on their 1942 hymnal, the Humbard Family Radio Book so there may be a few more originals out there.

• The Blood Done Sign My Name - Alpha Edward Humbard
• One Day While I Was Far Away - Martha Bell Humbard
• Better Than Gold - Martha Bell Humbard

The various members of the Humbard Family put out books, LPs, 78s, 8-tracks, and broadcast on radio and television. I even found a translucent red 10" record. They ran an inter-generational ministry which eventually collapsed in scandal and embezzlement in the 1970s. But I'm more interested in the early radio era than the quaaludes and nose-jobs era.  It is with thanks to the 2012 obituary of Maude Aimee Humbard in the Akron Beacon Journal that we can start to piece this together. 

Maude Aimee Humbard was born in 1922 in Dallas, TX. She married the Rev. Rex Humbard in 1942. Rev. Rex Humbard's actual name is Alpha Rex Emmanuel Humbard and he was born in 1919 in Little Rock, AR. They settled together in Akron, Ohio, in 1952. Their kids were, Don, Charles and both a Rex jr. and an Aimee Jr. 

The father of our Rev. Rex was Rex Alpha Edward Humbard and he was some kind of an itinerant evangelist. His mother was Martha Bell Humbard. Martha and Rex Sr. had 5 children including Rex jr., they were Branson Clement Edward, Anna Mary Esther, Martha Ruth (Davidson), Elizabeth Juanita (Banker), and Margaret Leona Belle. Rex Sr. actually ordained the younger Rex which is how we ended up with a family of traveling musical radio evangelists. This family tree does not even begin to address the husbands and wives, sister-in-laws and brother-in-laws with contributed to broadcasts and recordings like Wayne Jones who was on that red 10-inch. This family needs a flow chart. [LINK]  If they didn't recycle names every generation this would be easier. To quote Shupe Hadden (1988) 

"He included his whole family in the act - wife, children, and grand children. ...A  whole generation grew up with the Humbards, and, for may of them, the Humbard family was a part of their own..."

Branson Clement also became an itinerant musical radio evangelist. He and his wife Priscilla even performed in Canada at 630 CFCO. In 1964 they put out a self-released christian LP "Come Home, It's Suppertime" when they were based in Youngstown, OH. Their twin daughters Drusilla and Susanna handled most the lead vocals. But read the credits carefully, those list Leona Jones and Danny Koker. Leona is a Humbard by birth, Danny is Rex Sr's son-in-law. Leona and Danny had a son also named Danny Koker (Jr). He too is an ordained minister. He would therefore be Rev. Rex Jr's Humbard's nephew. That Danny Koker was the host of Counting Cars on the History Channel.

Anyway, getting back to the Humbards of the 1930s. Purportedly Rex Humbard's religious broadcasting career started on radio in 1932. [SOURCE] If that were true his radio career began at the age of 13 on 1040 KTHS-AM. This is corroborated by the Encyclopedia of American Gospel Music by W.K. McNeil which states:

"Their first and best-known child, the future televangelist Rex Humbard, was born in Little Rock, AR... Of their five later children, the oldest three (Ruth, Clement, and Leona) joined Rex in the first and best-known musical Humbard Family. During the late 1930s, they became radio regulars on  KTHS."

Some sources refer to this show as the Saturday Night Jamboree. In the late 1930s that's not possible, because by 1938, KTHS was airing the NBC syndicated National Barn Dance out of WLS on Saturday nights. [SOURCE] The show was picked up by NBC Radio in 1933, so this local jamboree window would have to be short.

There were a lot of Jamboree programs and they are often conflated. Excluding the ones on NBC-TV (1948-1948) and the one on WSAZ-TV (1953-1965) a Barnyard Jamboree and an Old Time Jamboree on WLS, there was also a Saturday Night Jamboree on KWEM in Memphis 140 miles east of Little Rock, and another on KCMO in St. Louis.  There was the Blue Monday Jamboree on KFRC, Tennessee Jamboree on WLAF, (1953 - 1978),  the Saturday Nite Jamboree on CBC Newfoundland (1963),  a Wheeling jamboree on WWVA,  the WNAX Hillbilly Jamboree, the Cornhusker Jamboree on KFAB, the KARK Dixie Jamboree, the Old King Jamboree on KVOO... the list goes on.

KTHS was only briefly a Mutual affiliate in 1938. But they were an NBC Blue affiliate starting in 1929 not switching to CBS until 1951. So it's no surprise to see them airing the WLS National Barn Dance.So If this program existed on KTHS, it had to be earlier. The signed on in 1926, so there is a lot of early to speak of.  But I pulled out a Indianapolis Times radio schedule January 23rd 1932 and lists a Barn Dance at 8:30 PM on Saturdays. Notably this is before the WLS program was syndicated. So that might be it.

Even the meticulously researched book Arkansas Airwaves by Roy Poindexter refers to the dubious Saturday Night Jamboree program. All print sources I have found which give attribution go back to his 1974 book as it's source material.  But even June and September Radio Movie Guides for 1940 thru 1942 [SOURCE] list the Humbards on only two radio stations: KLRA at 7:30 AM Saturday and at 12:45 on Sunday at KTHS. 

The Poindexter book clearly states that in 1940 "Humbard Family switched their religious radio  program from Hot Springs to KLRA."  But schedules in the Radio Movie Guide clearly show they were on both stations at at least into early 1942 intimating they had not fully relocated to Dallas yet. Kevin Keherberg's dissertation [SOURCE] corroborates some of the above. Additionally, Keherberg pointed out the Stamps/shapenote connection on page 186.

 "Brumley’s songs were frequently sung by all of Stamps-Baxter’s radio groups—especially after the composer joined the company’s staff in 1937—and KRLD was Stamps-Baxter’s home station."

Then in 1939 Virgil O. Stamps brought the family to Dallas to play at the state fair. In Dallas they impressed Pastor Albert Ott leader of the mega-church Assembly of God. The Humbards were so well received in Dallas that they relocated there, and stayed for 2 years. [SOURCE]  The church's website today claims that the Christ Ambassadors Full Gospel Hour” began on local radio station KRLD. But Mr. Ott also had another program, the Old Camp Meeting on 1310 WRR which dates back to at least 1937. Documents clearly indicate that the shows aired concurrently. Ott's program on Full Gospel Hour program aired on KRLD at 11:00 AM to noon on Sundays which is immediately after the WRR program ended. But even if the Humbards were playing all of Ott's programs I still only come up with three weekly shows, and not the 13 listed in the encyclopedia. In Billboard magazines 1967 The World of Gospel Music special. It claims that "In 1939 the family moved to Dallas and did 33 radio programs a week for the Bethel Temple, WRR, and the Stamps -Baxter Music Co., KRLD."   So Billboard says 33, the encyclopedia says 13, but I count only 3. You start to get the impression that they were prone to exaggeration.

Their resume isn't all bunk, but clearly there is some incongruity here. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas claims that in the early 1940s, rev. Rex (Jr.) began a daily radio program carried nationwide on Mutual Network and the NBC Blue Network.That Billboard special [SOURCE] goes on to claim they began syndication on Mutual in 1943 and their daily program was carried on 100 stations. In 1944 they were picked up by NBC Blue. There is very little documentation on that syndication. at all save for that single WFBM listing in 1949. But that single listing on 1230 WFBM is an anachronism, as WFBM was a CBS affiliate and they had been broadcasting the Humbards since 1942. Mutual did have 500+ affiliates but mostly either small stations in big markets or just stations in small markets. So airplay there may have been real but poorly documented.

The Humbards also claimed to have broadcast over the Mutual Network for more than 30 years. This is false, not even possible. Their radio career before Akron, OH was under 20 years ⁠—total (1932 - 1942). But there is an obvious doorway to the Mutual network on their resume. In 1940 WRR was already a Mutual network affiliate, and they remained one through the whole decade. But the Ypsilanti Daily Press managed to close the loop. Their Feb 14th, 1944 issue lists " Humbard Family" in their "Pick of the Air Today" column. No call letters are included. It lists them only as "BLU" which means the NBC Blue Network: WLW, CKLW, WJBK and WGN. A November 25th, 1943 issue of the same newspaper lists them under the Mutual Network.

Then came the move to Akron in 1952. First they broadcast on 1350 WADC-AM from 9:15 AM - 9:45 AM Saturday mornings and later they added WXEL in Toledo and then 640 WHLO-AM. Strangely the WADC 30-year anniversary booklet barely mentions them, and does not even list them in the 1955 schedule, leaving the impression they were still very much small potatoes. [SOURCE]

The Humbards made the jump to television via WAKR-TV Channel 49 and WJW-TV. The once itinerant evangelists became televangelists. In the 1970s the ministry started to unravel: internal disputes, lawsuits, financial problems, tax fraud, loans from Jimmy Hoffa, embezzlement, and the IRS was sniffing around. In 1983 Rev. Rex Humbard resigned as pastor. He retired from on-air preaching in the 1990s. In 1994 he sold off his Akron Cathedral and retired to Florida. He died on September 21st, 2007.

Untangling KTHS-AM and KTHS-FM

1090 KTHS-AM is best known as the station where Lum and Abner started out their career.  You'll notice that logo above states "on the air since 1958" but that has more to do with the modern station on 1480.  Today's KTHS has nothing to do with Lum or Abner or Hot Springs AR. I'll explain.

In 1952 KTHS-AM became a bit of an issue for NARBA (docket 9974). They wanted to move from Hot Springs to Little Rock, and increase power up to 50 kw, unlimited time becoming a clear channel station.  This was a challenge to the jigsaw puzzle of existing clear channel AM frequencies that had mostly been settled at the end of NARBA. But their timing was iffy. James Noe, the owner of 1060 WNOE-AM in New Orleans had also filed to move to 1090, for the purpose of increasing the daytime power of his station to 50 kw (night time to 25 k).  1450 KGRH-AM in Fayetteville, AR had also filed to move to 1090 requesting an increase of power from 250 watts to 50 kw daytime with a directional antenna.

The FCC handled this in a pretty even handled manner. They compiled dozens of pages of public documentation on the fitness of their engineering, finances, public service and community connections in validating their decision. The FCC identified 11 different criteria on which they would measure the relative merits of these conflicting applications. It's lengthy but I think this is worth reading to understand their reasoning. There is a very transparent effort here to demonstrate their even-handedness.  I do wish the FCC still operated this way instead of the Ajit Pai's agenda based rule-making. He's a tool.

1. To determine the technical, financial, and other qualifications of the individual applicant, and of the corporate applicants, their officers, directors, and stockholders to construct and operate respectively Stations WNOE, KTHS, and KGRH and with respect with Radio Broadcasting, Inc. to continue the existing operation of Station KTHS.

2. To determine the areas and populations which may be expected to gain or lose primary or secondary service from the operation of Stations WNOE, KTHS, and KGRH, as proposed, and the character of other service available to such areas and populations.

3. To determine the areas and populations which receive primary service from the present operation of Station KTHS and the character of other broadcast service available to such areas and populations.

4. To determine the type and character of program service proposed to be rendered and whether it would meet the requirements of the populations and areas proposed to be served.

5. To determine whether the operation of Stations WNOE, KTHS, and KGRH, as proposed, and the continuance of the existing operation of KTHS would involve objectionable interference with any other existing broadcast stations, and, if so, the nature and extent thereof, the areas and populations affected thereby, and the availability of other broadcast service to such areas and populations.

6. To determine whether the operation of Stations WNOE, KTHS, and KGRH, as proposed, and the continuance of the existing operation of KTHS would involve objectionable interference each with the other or with the services proposed in any other pending applications for broadcast facilities, and, if so, the nature and extent thereof, the areas and populations affected thereby, and the availability of other broadcast service to such areas and populations.

7. To determine the overlap, if any, that will exist between the service areas of Station KTHS, as proposed, and Station KWKH, Shreveport, Louisiana, the nature and extent thereof, and whether such overlap, if any, is in contravention of Section 3.35 of the Commission's Rules.

8. To determine whether the operation of Stations WNOE, KTHS, and KGRH, as proposed would be in conflict with any international agreement to which the United States is a party.

9. To determine whether the construction of Stations WNOE,KTHS, and KGRH, as proposed, would constitute a hazard to air navigation.

10. To determine whether the installation and operation of Stations WNOE, KTHS, and KGRH, as proposed, and the continuance of the existing operation of Station KTHS would be in compliance with the Commission's Rules and Standards of Good Engineering Practice Concerning Standard Broadcast Stations.

11. To determine on a comparative basis which, if any, of the applications in this consolidated proceeding should be granted.

KTHS-AM first signed on December 20, 1924 first on 600 kHz broadcasting from the Arlington Hotel.  It hopped from 780, 800 and 1040 before landing on 1090 in the 1930s. In 1928 the license was transferred to the Hot Springs Chamber of Commerce who claimed they operated it at a loss and transferred it to Radio Broadcasting Inc in trade for 500 shares of stock payable to the chamber and 250 shares of stock payable to the Arlington Hotel. The Chamber further received six daily 50-word spots for a period of 10 years. (The FCC docket has a foot note that lists the current value of the Chambers stock as $32,500.) The book Arkansas Airwaves by Ray Poindexter covers the early years in great detail.

In 1944 80% of the shares of Radio Broadcasting Inc. was sold to Tri-State Broadcasting System Inc in trade for the assets and facilities of KTBS-AM in Shreveport which was complete by September of 1944. At the time all the shares of Tri-State Broadcasting System were owned by the Times Publishing Company which owned KWKH-AM also in Shreveport. (Under the multiple-ownership regulations of the era, this was a good trade.)

So in December of 1944 the new owners of KTHS filed to move the marginally solvent station to West Memphis, AR. This is a surprise move. West Memphis abuts Memphis, TN 180+ miles to the East.  Only 2 years earlier they had abandoned an attempt to move 50 miles North to Little Rock. It shows chutzpah. It was denied. They petitioned to reconsider... that was denied too. Under the terms of NARBA, the FCC was committed to keeping KTHS an Arkansas station. The move to West Memphis would have in effect made them a Tennessee station. No soup for you. So in August 1950, like a consolation prize, KTHS re-filed to move to Little Rock, with an increase from 10,000 to 50,000 watts  (directional at night) was filed on December 8th 1951. The FCC's initial decision was released just weeks later on December 26th approving the move.

The reason for this dance is easy to understand. In 1950 the population of Hot Springs was only 29,000. Memphis was 396,000. Little Rock was just a quarter of that at 102,000. The owners were seeking higher population density and higher ad rates. Simple as that.

Just wait there's more. Under NARBA 1090 kHz is a clear channel frequency on which had priority to our station in Arkansas, WBAL-AM Baltimore, MD and XERB on Rosarito, Baja California in Mexico. KTHS had to use a directional antenna at night to protect the other two stations. They were also required to reduce power if they caused interference. (WBAL was unlimited time and non-directional.) Furthermore they may receive interference from CMBS in Havana, Cuba, CMKR in Santiago de Cuba and XEHR in Puebla Mexico. They also acknowledged that it could cause a little interference to KRLD in Dallas on the first adjacent frequency. KTHS was wedged in tight.

in 1955 they launched a TV station, Channel 11 KTHV and in 1962 they were both sold to different owners. KTHS-AM was flipped to Top-40 and the call letters changed to KAAY. The station 107.1 KTHS used the call sign KSCC prior to 1991. This is a bit of a conflict as even the FCC database claims that KTHS 1480 has been on air since 8/3/1958. Well it's true, but they originally signed on as KTCN-AM as a 1 Kw daytimer under the Ozark Radio & Equipment Co. The brains behind that re-branding was Ernie Howard, former KVLC announcer, KARK-TV reporter and later program Director and then owner and GM of KTCN. Obituary here.

Lum and Abner

Lum and Abner were a comedy duo in the 1930s. Their fame has largely outlived their affiliates, and the men who played the characters. They began as a black face act locally at the University of Arkansas, they became a nationally syndicated program of great renown. But for some reason they are rarely grouped in with other golden era programs.



The general store that appears in the above film actually exists now as the Lum and Abner Museum. Chester Lauck and Norris Goff knew each other since childhood. They attended U of Arkansas together and even joined the Sigma Chi Fraternity together. They decided to try to get a job together at KTHS-AM in Hot Springs, AR but before the audition decided to drop the black face routine and do a hillbilly bit instead. It was something in the spirit of Amos & Andy but with decidedly more rural flair. PD Campbell Arnoux signed them for one 15 minute program each week. Their gig at KTHS went so well that after just a few weeks they got picked up by NBC for syndication. NBC even got them a national sponsor, Quaker Oats. When the Quaker contract expired, the duo picked up Ford as a new sponsor and broadcast just on WBAP and WFAA out of Dallas and Ft. Worth. In those days they were considered separate markets. More here.

NBC didnt' treat them well and In 1934 Horlick's Malted Milk because their new sponsor and the program moved to WCCO in Minneapolis and were heard on the station alone. When the station joined the Mutual Broadcasting System they picked up WXYZ in Detroit and Chicago's WGN-AM. In 1940 Alka-Seltzer became the sponsor and in 1944 they left MBS for ABC. which had only just ceased to be the NBC Blue network. The Keystone Broadcasting System recorded their programs for stations not directly connected to ABC. In 1948 they became a half-hour comedy series sponsored by Post Cereal. More here.
Those keystone network recordings are why we have recordings of Lum and Abner today. In 1948 they moved over to CBS where their program ran until 1950. the show ended in 1953. By then they were already on the big screen. They made 7 movies by the 1950s. My personal favorite bits are when Lum & abner start a radio station a plot that stretched over 3 15-minute episodes. You can download the Boxcars Oldtime radio podcast here.