Originally posted Thursday, October 4, 2018 by RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com on his AJC Radio & TV Talk blog
Joyce Littel, the long-time host of the Quiet Storm on V-103, is celebrating her 35 years in radio by bringing back her signature "Passion & Poetry" show October 6 at Center Stage.
Though she was taken off air in 2010 by V-103 after 20 years at the station for budgetary reasons, she continued to host a digital show. She never cut ties with management at V-103 and V-103 never filled her slot while she was gone, opting instead to air the show jockless.
Even while off V-103, she said fans would regularly ask her why she wasn’t back on. “I was never bitter,” she said in a recent interview. Her mom taught her that gratitude was a far better way to go through life than resentment.
“I knew in my heart one day that show would be mine again,” she said.
Her patience paid off: V-103 first gave her some part time work in 2014, then brought her back full time last year in her original role. "It's like I never left," she said.
She is thrilled to also bring back "Passion & Poetry," a mixture of poetry and music. (Buy tickets here at $40 apiece.)
Actor Malcolm-Jamal Warner, who currently plays a hotshot surgeon on Fox's "The Resident," will return as a poet. He has done her show multiple times. (I interviewed him about it in 2010.) Singer Dionne Farris will be attending as well.
Littel said she came into radio accidentally. While at Morris Brown College, she ran into the WCLK program director who liked her voice and asked her to do public service announcements.
Dekalb CEO Michael Thurmond in 1983 hired her out of college to work at a small R&B station in Athens. In 1988, Silas "SiMan Baby" Alexander helped her land a gig in Atlanta at WIGO-AM. In 1990, Mike Roberts at V-103 then nabbed her to work overnights but she soon began hosting Quiet Storm.
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