Making Radio Waves

“There goes the last DJ/who plays what he wants to play/and says what he wants to say…”

This, from Tom Petty’s “The Last DJ.” seems to describe the winner of the Georgia Association of Broadcaster’s Award for the 2011 Air Personality of the year in the small market. K.B. Travis, of WDDK, hosts the Wake Up Service and has been in the radio game for over 30 years.

K.B. experienced the sweet taste of entertaining early. He participated in drama in high school and was even inducted into the International Thespian Society in 1971. There, he honed his logistic and organization skills through stage management-talents that would certainly serve him well in his broadcasting career.

He went on from drama to the Columbia School of Broadcasting in Atlanta. The owner of the school, Jim Uglum, was and remains K.B. Travis’s most influential mentor. After graduating, K.B.’s career moved him from station to station, city to city and opportunity to opportunity. His resume is nothing short of impressive: afternoon and morning host at WIMO, began specializing in programming at WFOX in 1980, moving on to KICKS 101.5 in ’83 then meeting back up with Uglum in LaGrange in 1986.

From there, K.B. moved back to Atlanta at 94Q where he produced the Ike Newkirk show. It was also at 94Q (known now as Star 94) where he hosted Jazz Flavors-a style of music K.B. plays himself.

K.B. definitely had a “well rounded introduction to radio,” he said, which more than helped his transitioning from musician to radio DJ. I asked him which he preferred-playing music or DJing-to which he chuckled, saying that being a DJ provides more job security. He thinks for a moment and adds, sincerely, that both “equally fulfill a need.”

He fleshed out his disc jockey journey from 94Q moving to Canton at WCHK where he played music director. Two years later, in 1993, he added program director to his resume at WNGC in Athens. After spending three years there, K.B. took another three years and quit. He began freelance DJ work, appearing in night clubs, where he ended up as a full-time assistant manager.

Even with his busy schedule, K.B. continued playing music. His instrument? The bass. Listening to old rock playing on the radio, he fishes out the bass line, something that comes naturally since he first taught himself how to play when he was 14 years old.

Following his broadcasting break, he started at WDDK as operations manager and host of his own morning show “The Wake Up Service.” He is still happily there today and his work at WDDK earned him the GABBY he accepted in early June of this year. And while there is much to say on his work as a broadcaster, K.B. is still focused on the one important ingredient in both aspects of his life-the music.

I started the subject, to which he is well versed, with the same question I ask many musicians: If you could resurrect any musician of your choice, who would it be? After a lot of consideration, he said that because “so many have given to music…I wouldn’t choose a single musician. I’d bring back the music.” While K.B. has his own musical preferences, ranging from oldies and classic rock to country and big swing bands (which his father played in during WWII), he values and respects the artists who allow the music to be, as he puts it, “the social conscious of our country.”

He brought up names like Ray Charles, Willie Nelson and even Tobey Keith as perfect examples of musicians who do not relinquish, but center on, the music.

Accordingly, with great honor as this year’s Air Personality (Class A), K.B. Travis holds a message for the future of music. “I’d like to see it when music meant something; spoke to something about something.”