Walt Baby Love

CH: You speak with quite a spiritual conviction. Does that come from your training as an ordained minister for the AME Church?

WBL: No, I think that comes from living life and growing up in Crayton, Pennsylvannia in the mountains with my great-grandparents and having no real running water, 'til I got into junior high school, high school. Looking at this man work hard everyday and love his wife and my grandmother trying to do anything she could to help him. I grew up with an example; we went to church all week. I went to choir rehearsal, to prayer meetings, VYPU on Sundays at five o'clock - all day church. So, I think my conviction comes from living life; and so my training as an ordained minister is only polishing some things from the standpoint of learning how a particular denomination does things, how the church wants to see things, but my conviction is really all about my own walk with the Lord.

CH: At what point in your life did you realize you were going to have a career in broadcast radio?

WBL: Not until I was ready to get out in the military in December 1967. I was just about ready to get discharged after two tours of duty. I was in for approximately six years, eleven months.

CH: Vietnam?

WBL: No, I was in Southeast Asia and in Northeast Thailand…but the point is a number of guys kept saying to me, "Man, you oughta become a disc jockey", as they used to call it. So while I was in the army, I started writing letters. Nobody would pay me any attention. While I was actually still in, I went on a couple of interviews. People were very nasty to me. I stumbled on a copy of Broadcasting Magazines while I was still in the military and went to its classifieds and noticed it had all these job opportunities. So, I decided to send letters and tapes of myself. And, I must have sent about thirty of them and I got four responses saying that they would possibly be interested in talking with me and would like to hear something else. What I sent wasn't exactly what they wanted but it gave them a sense that I could articulate.