The Singing Grocer

As ice tinkled and dancers swayed on New Year's Eve at Broglio's, a nightclub in Kingston, N.Y., the bandleader sang:

Yes, we have no bananas, We have no bananas today. We've string beans and onions Cabbages and scallions . . .

Cracked Club Owner Lee Broglio: "That's his only plug for the grocery business." The bandleader, billed on holiday and weekend nights as Jimmy Cullen, is known on weekdays as James Aloysius Cullen, president of the grocery company credited with originating the modern supermarket: Long Island's thriving, 25-store King Kullen chain.

Bandleader Cullen's musical night life is a direct outgrowth of his days in the supermarkets' tin-can alleys. Music is more than a hobby to him; it is a medicine concocted to relieve the nerve-snapping tensions of running a big business. At one time the strain pulled Cullen apart, and turned him into an alcoholic. When his father Mike (the original King Kullen) died in 1936, virtually the whole weight of the family-owned enterprise fell on 24-year-old Jimmy. King Mike had been a man of tough fiber and massive drive; he had put together a 15-store supermarket chain in six years. Says Jimmy Cullen: "Everybody expected me to be like him, follow in his footsteps. But I didn't have it. I started drinking; it made me feel like I could handle anything. I kept drinking more and more, and then I couldn't stop."

Young Cullen, unable to carry on his business, went for help to Alcoholics Anonymous, finally put himself under the care of a psychiatrist, who told him to find a hobby. Cullen had always liked music, so he started "fooling around with it again." He signed up a drummer, bass man and accordion player (Cullen sings and plays flute, clarinet and tenor sax), and began to play at nightspots and parties near his home in Great Neck, L.I.

When Cullen returned to his stores, he put a bottle of whisky under his desk "so I'd always have the choice before me." He got to like his desk. The King Kullen chain's yearly gross sales when he took over again were running at about $7,000,000. Cullen made changes: he turned the vegetable and bakery sections into integral parts of the stores instead of independent concessions, expanded the meat departments ("Before, we just tolerated meat"). He closed unprofitable stores, opened new ones and boosted gross sales to $30 million. As the 25th and newest King Kullen store (in Farmingdale, L.I.) swung into full operation, Jimmy Cullen was already making plans for eight more.

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