Led and with musical arrangements by Ken Darby (1909-1992), the King's Men (tenors Bud Linn and Jon Dodson, baritone Rad Robinson, and Darby singing bass) joined the Fibber show in 1940 to sing mostly novelty numbers and, during the war, patriotic songs. They also backed Jerry Colonna in some of the memorable Disney cartoons based on American folk ballads ("Casey Jones" and "Casey at the Bat") while Darby was choral arranger and musical director at Disney.

The quartet was formed by Darby in 1928 as The Ramblers, Robinson replacing original baritone Joseph Galkin in 1929. They were renamed the King's Men during a stint at Hollywood station KFWB and sang at various stations in the area until an offer of stage appearances with Paul Whiteman prompted a move to New York. From there, they were featured on several network programs, including their own NBC show in 1936. They returned to Hollywood in 1938.

The group were heard on the soundtrack of several films, some as early as 1929, and appeared onscreen in several Hopalong Cassidy movies and 1938's Alexander's Ragtime Band.

Darby was also a composer, creating the musical arrangement of "The Night Before Christmas" that became an annual Christmas presentation on FM&M and was released as part of a Fibber and Molly 78 rpm album for Capitol. In addition to his Disney work, which lasted from 1941-48, he supervised the music for several films at 20th Century Fox, including Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe films. He also won shared three Oscars for scoring films with the legendary Alfred Newman, the fruits of a twenty-three-year association; later in life, he would establish the Alfred Newman Memorial Library at USC and assemble a symphonic cantata (Man of Galilee) from Newman's scoring of Biblical movies. He also created the sped-up Munchkin voices for The Wizard of Oz, and performed the voice of the Munchkinland Mayor.

His biggest claim to fame for a non-OTR audience was writing the score for Elvis Presley's first movie Love Me Tender, including the title song which became Elvis' fourth #1 record on the Billboard singles chart.  King's Men Robinson and Dodson are among the group credited in the session notes with backing vocals, at least in the version recorded for the movie.  As was the usual practise in the Elvis camp at the time, Presley was co-credited with the authorship of the song (and thus received half the publishing royalties), but Darby billed his "half" of the co-authorship to his wife Vera (under her maiden name). His reason? "Because she didn't write it either."

A few notes about the other members of the group:

• Jon Dodson (born Dodson Blunt, Joplin, MO; d. 1963), the oldest member of the group, was the son of Rev. J Blunt, who was the minister of the First Christian Church of Ocean Park.
• Grafton (Bud) Linn (1909-1968) was a sociology major before joining the King's Men, and returned to that work after the group broke up, eventually becoming the director of the Thousand Oaks, CA branch of the YMCA.  His daughters Penelope, Kathy, and Susan also sang as the Linn Sisters.
• Radburn (Rad) Robinson (1910-1988) was born the son of a bishop in the Mormon church. Eventually, he became the entertainment contractor for Howard Hughes' hotels in Las Vegas.  He also worked as a choral contractor for Darby during the scoring of The Greatest Story Ever Told.
  

Singers that preceded the King's Men in the musical slot included the Four Notes, Donald Novis, Jimmy Shields and Perry Como (whom you might have heard of). Martha Tilton, who was a regular vocalist with Benny Goodman, also sang for the show briefly at the beginning of the 1941-42 season.

Links of interest

• Ken Darby article at Wikipedia