WLAP lexington, Ky.

Here we are at my first big break. While I was a 19 year old sophmore at the University of Kentucky, I got a part time job doing morning news at 630 am WLAP. After a year or so I became news director.

In the picture below I'm posing with our other newsman-Bill Carroll who is driving o

ur van. This is a great shot of the old WLAP studios and offices at 177 N. Upper Street in Lexington. The office on the left of WLAP eventually became WLAP - FM which was one of the first Urban programmed FM stations in America.

When the new owners took over WLAP in 1964, our popular evening DJ Denny Mitchell was hired away by WVLK and I was asked to move from news to fill his DJ spot 6:40pm to midnight. My real name is Bill Herald but I needed a catchy radio name-especially since the Lexington newspaper was the Lexington Herald. I had just seen the Jerry Lewis movie "The Nutty Professor" where Jerry becomes a real cool cat named "Buddy Love", so I became "Billy Love" which would stick with me for the rest of my life.

Click on the players below to hear Billy Love air checks from 1964 through my last show in 1966

"Eggbert" in 1965 1964

1966 Last Show 1966

For some reason I saved tapes of all the promo announcements I used on WLAP, most of which were voiced by Nick Clooney, father of actor George Clooney. There are also some done by Wayne Bell who was a sports reporter on channel 18 TV, Herb Oscar Kent, and Hal Kemp who were also announcers on WLAP. The singing promos were done by a University of kentucky duet Avo & Ray who had a pretty good song on Fraternity records, "College Life". To hear all of the promos just click here.....

Here's a picture of a GREAT radio staff - WLAP in 1966. This came from a newspaper ad we did to brag about an audience share of over 40%. That's me in the right on the top row (with hair now). The handsome fellow at the lower right is Nick Clooney - actor George Clooney's father and a great role model for ANYONE starting out in radio. Just below me is Herb Oscar Kent who took my place on the night show when I headed to Orlando and WHOO in 1966.

WLAP tribute site