WALT “BABY” LOVE
For Walt “Baby” Love, he says that “my faith is all I have.”
That’s more than enough.
Love’s faith has taken him to the pinnacle of honors for a radio personality—an induction into the Radio Hall of Fame.
The prestigious honor came on Nov. 1, 2022, at Radisson Blue Aqua Hotel in Chicago.
Love was born in Warren, Ohio, but quickly moved to Creighton, a small town around the corner from New Kensington. He was raised in that small town, and graduated from East Deer-Frazer High School. The school is now known as Deer Lakes High School, as East Deer Township merged with West Deer Township High School.
According to a bio on Love’s website, his career started while he was an active member in the United States Army, once serving as a paratrooper and achieving the rank of Staff Sergeant E-6, a member of the famed 82nd Airborne Division. While on Active Duty, Love became a part-time on-air personality at WWGO-AM and WWYN-FM radio in Erie. In Houston, Texas, Love got his big break at KYOK-AM radio and made history as the first Black on-air talent at KILT Radio.
Within four years of being in the broadcasting industry, Love became the first Black on-air talent at RKO radio, hosting programs at CKLW-AM radio in the Canadian Province of Windsor, Ontario, and WOR-FM in New York City. During this span of his career, he also held on-air positions at WNBC-AM, WBLS-FM, WOR-FM/WXLO-FM (99X) in New York City and 93 KHJ, KMPC AND KFI-AM in Los Angeles.
Love also was an Operations Manager at Chicago’s WVON-AM and FM, and worked in the same capacity at KGFJ/KKTT AND KUTE (102-FM), Los Angeles.
However, he’s known across the country for his syndicated programs. “The Countdown” with Walt “Baby” Love aired on hundreds of stations from 1982 to 2011, and “Gospel Traxx” with Walt “Baby” Love, which has been airing for more than 20 years and currently airs on WGBN-AM (1360) in Pittsburgh, Saturdays from 8 to 10 a.m. The show was once heard on WAMO, along with “The Countdown.” Love has two other syndicated shows, “The Urban AC Countdown” and a short-form vignette program, “African Americans Making It Happen.”
In June 1997, Love was ordained in the ministry at the First House of Prayer in Chicago. Later, he became an Ordained Deacon and then Elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, assigned to First African Methodist Church Los Angeles.
Faith “is everything to me,” Love told the New Pittsburgh Courier in an exclusive interview, Jan. 28. “If I didn’t really believe, I couldn’t make it and certainly couldn’t have made it this far in life from my days back in Western Pennsylvania, the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division, Southeast Asia, back to the States and then breaking into the radio business where Black-formatted radio stations wouldn’t hire me because of my articulation and General Market Mainstream White stations wouldn’t give me an opportunity because…you know why! As the Bible says in a number of places, ‘BUT GOD…’”
Love added: “I like to say about my life experience, not only in the radio business, but in the military as well, ‘BUT GOD…’ gave me favor with people of influence and power and that’s how much my faith in GOD plays into my life.”
Love also spent more than 20 years as Urban Radio & Music Editor at Radio & Record Newspaper.
Love still has family in the Pittsburgh area. Now a California resident, Love reminisced to the Courier on what he learned growing up in Western Pa. “Growing up in a very small community was the importance of family, faith, friends, self-worth, and you have to dream BIG!! I learned at a young age from my great-grandparents and my mom, that you have to think out of the box if you plan to succeed at whatever you’re choosing to pursue in your life’s journey. The Bible tells us that WISDOM is a virtue and my great-grandparents were full of WISDOM and so were a number of people in my family, all living in a 10-to-12-mile radius of each other. That was ‘SOUL’ power in and of itself.”
On Nov. 1, 2022, the decades of tireless hard work and consistent excellence in his craft culminated in that Hall of Fame induction, a place where most of the inductees over the years have been Caucasians. For the 2022 induction class, 2 of the 9 honorees were Black; the other was Marv Dyson, a radio executive who managed radio stations for 50 years, most notably in Chicago.
“It was a great experience,” Love, born Walter L. Shaw Jr., told the Courier of that evening. Decades ago, before Love was to do an on-air shift at a station in Texas, the announcer before him said that Walt “Baby” Love was coming up next. Why did that on-air talent include the “Baby” part? That wasn’t supposed to be Walt Love’s on-air name. But the name stuck. Walt “Baby” Love was born.
“All I can say is ‘Thank you, Jesus!’” Love said of his Hall of Fame induction. “It was really all I thought it might be and more. To GOD be the glory.”
About Post Author
