Profile: Willie Morgan. Born and educated in London, he schooled with film director Julian Temple, pop singer Adam Ant (Stuart Goddard), former Tottenham Hotspur Chairman Irving Scholar, and actor Tim Munro. Upon leaving he worked in a London record store, Musicland, run by B&C Records, visited by many top celebrities and disc jockeys quite regularly, and alongside Reg Dwight, aka Elton John. Careers with varying record companies then followed, including RCA's UK division, Jet and Phonogram/Mercury working in many roles, some media based, for a wide range of artists of whose popularity spans the 60s to today.
Willie had a hand in the football industry - in 1980 he became a disc-jockey & stadium announcer for Spurs at White Hart Lane, helping to make four 'Cup Final' records with the likes of Chas & Dave and club players, all of which reached the charts. He also wrote the B side of Glenn Hoddle & Chris Waddle's single 'Diamond Lights' and worked on Gazza's 'Fog On The Tyne' remake with Lindisfarne. He also worked at Wembley, Arsenal's ground Highbury and Watford's Vicarage Road, in a similar capacity as DJ/announcer
1981 saw the launch of Willie's own
company 'Diamond Promotion & Publicity' which led to ten years worth of work
for personally chosen projects with different levels of success. His work
with the music industry gave him a lead into radio and spent a number of year at
the hospital radio station for Paddington General, and then for Capital Radio in
London setting questions for David
Hamilton. His first actual DJ job was as a fill on Coast-AM, Invicta
Radio's MW station presenting a Rock Show from their Maidstone studios.
This took him to Chiltern Radio for Herts, Beds and Bucks as a producer for an
entire weekend of Sixties music which trialled the planned SuperGold service.
Chiltern went onto launch the AM Oldies station on Sunday 24th June 1990 where
Willie started running weekly 'Elvis' hours, which continued until the GWR
takeover gathered momentum and the station closed on Sunday 1st September 1996.
During the six years at Chiltern, he moved from freelance presenter to Network
Controller and was heard on Chiltern Radio SuperGold 828AM (Herts, Beds, &
Bucks), Chiltern Radio SuperGold 792AM (East of England), Northants Radio
SuperGold 1557AM, Severn Sound SuperGold 774AM (Glos, Hereford, & Worcs),
and across Europe via the Astra satellite. The service was also carried by
several subscribing stations, including Invicta Supergold (Kent), Signal 2
(Staffs.), Wey Valley (Hants.), Orchard-FM (Somerset) and Swansea Sound (South
Wales).
He was the network's Head of Music from 1992, presenting regular shifts at varying times, and was a producer and presenter on specialist programming.such as The Elvis Hour, The Beatles Hour, Rock & Roll - The Real Thing, The Classic Soul Hour, Down In the Vaults, America's Favourite Countdown, Born In the USA, Get On The Right Track, Red Hot & Country and Sunday Will Never Be The Same, which gained cult-status. IThe latter show ran successfully for five years.
'Red Hot & Country' first started on Oasis Radio 96.6 FM (South Herts) in 1994, winning CMT-Europe's award for the UK's Best Country Music programme on a local station. He became the PC for the station a year later., following GWR's purchase of the Chiltern Group, retaining control of the SuperGold brand. 'Red Hot & Country' was moved to SuperGold when Oasis was relaunched. SuperGold was eventually merged into GWR's Classic Gold brand, and Willie took redundancy, but had the honour of broadcasting the last Elvis hour and the cult Sunday show to close down SuperGold, therefore staying with the station throughout it's history.
His radio career continued with a stint at High Wycombe's elevenSEVENTY, filling when required. 'Red Hot & Country' returned on Century 106 (East Midlands) where he also presented 'Soulful Sunday'. Both shows aired for 15 months but it was a change in station management that put paid to his time and 'Red Hot & Country' moved once more to Wave 105 (Solent & South of England). Station policy changes again led to another end of series.
Since 1996, Willie has provided help and assistance to RSL groups including Jubilee-FM (North London), Soul-FM (Nottingham), The Oldies Station (Leeds), BCFM (Bedford), and Shalom-FM (North London). He's also reported on football for BBC GLR (London), Talk Radio (UK), and on BSkyB TV's Soccer Saturday, and is also known to have voiced TV and radio commercials.
Ritz Country 1035 has been his radio home more recently from November 1998 covering most daytime and evening shows, and producing some special shows too including the '"Captain America Radio Show" for eighteen months on Ritz prior to a move to Sunday nights at 10pm on Virgin Radio. In June 2000, he was the foundation of station broadcasts from Nashville, feeding reports from David Allan each morning and covered his Sunday shows whilst he was away. His contract with Country 1035 ended in April 2002. Willie witnessed a greet deal of changes at Ritz Country, including the station name change to incorporate the word Ritz. But he made a return to the station in August 2001 following a change in management and presented an afternoon show on 15th September plus a fill on the 'Number Ones' show on 19th October 2001. He also produced the station's coverage of the 35th CMA Awards as he had done previously in 1999 and 2000, but for 2001, for the Dave Cash breakfast show. He was also called in to present the weekday evening show for a two week run in late November of the same year, plus the 'Hall Of Fame' show in the same period. As with his other jobs post return on a freelance basis, he joined the station staff again just prior to Christmas 2001, seeing in the New Year live on-air.
Ritz was purchased by the Mean Fiddler Group on May 24th 2002. Manx Radio on the Isle Of Man was Willie's next radio home in June 2002, presenting a weekly show titled "Jukebox Saturday Night", which focused on the 50s and 60s.
Whereabouts: Willie Morgan updates: 'I'm no longer doing a show for Manx Radio, and spend most of my time freelancing at Virgin Radio. I produce the Captain America show (now Sat/Sun 1am), which is presented by Nick Stewart, and get to make a few on-air comments in most shows!'