Joe Bankhead

AUDIO (11 min) - Recorded in 1982 on anniversary of KBOA (excerpts below)

"When I started in this business, I didn’t know anything about selling, so I got me a bunch of postcards and I said, "Did you know you can advertise on KBOA for as little as a dollar and ninety cents? Well, you can. Call 830 and ask for Joe." Eight-three-oh was our telephone number in those days. I didn’t get a telephone call, but I got a postcard in reply. It said, stop by and see me, Denny Mitchell, Gobler Mercantile Company. That’s the only response I got.

So I drove down there and it was a great big old imposing country store. I went in there and talked to Denny and he told me what he wanted. He said, "I want about ten spots a day to start this thing out. I want to try something." So we tried it out and about two or three weeks later, he called back and said he was thinking about a program. I didn't know anything about programs so I got Ray Van (program director) and we went out there and sold Denny sponsorship of Old Camp Meetin' Time, thirty minutes a day starting out. His program on Saturday expanded to an hour daily, it expanded to an hour and a half a day, it was supplemented by ten or fifteen spots a day.

The Gobler Mercantile Company exploded. It was the Sears Roebuck of Southeast Missouri. People came for hundreds of miles to shop at Gobler. He would add another hundred square foot addition and stock it with refrigerators. In the early fifties he added another addition, he stocked with TV sets, he put in a furniture lounge, he put in groceries, he put in clothing stores, he had warehouses, he had eighteen-wheel trucks running all over the country.

Gobler Mercantile Company got so big it just destroyed Denny Mitchell. It just got so darn big that one man couldn’t control it. It burned down and was a very unhappy end to a glorious, glorious story. But KBOA showed its effectiveness as a merchandising tool in every aspect with the Gobler Mercantile Company."