By Lee Davis
Veteran sportscaster Matt Coulter can think of a thousand stories about his late mentor and friend, John Ed Willoughby.
But he isn’t comfortable telling a single one.
“I can’t tell his stories well enough to do him justice,” said Coulter of Willoughby, who died March 25 at age 80. “John Ed was the Bear Bryant of storytelling. Not only could he tell his stories better than you, he could tell your stories better than you. It was a gift. He loved to make people laugh.”
And for decades, nobody in Birmingham made more people laugh longer and louder than John Ed Willoughby.
“John Ed was Birmingham, and Birmingham was very much John Ed Willoughby,” Coulter said.
In the 1970s, Willoughby partnered with Tommy Charles, already a local media icon, to form arguably the most successful radio duo in Birmingham history. The pair came together almost by accident, as Willoughby began his presence on Charles’ show on WSGN as merely an audience member calling in.
But his popularity grew, and soon Charles asked station management to bring the newcomer on board full time. From there, “The T.C. and John Ed Show” spanned two decades and three radio stations, cleverly blending conservative political views, homespun humor and occasionally controversy as it dominated the early morning ratings. At the show’s peak, it was the primary local news source for many of its listeners.
Coulter said he was reporting sports news for the show at WERC in 1991 when he first became acquainted with Willoughby.
“Sometimes they would let me hang around in the studio for a few minutes after the sportscast was completed,” Coulter said. “John Ed and I clicked from the very beginning.”
A successful broadcaster himself, Coulter said he learned much from Willoughby, particularly from a practical commercial standpoint.
“John Ed taught me the value of client loyalty,” he said. “You can’t convincingly promote a product if you don’t believe in it and the people who produce it – and nobody had more loyal advertisers than John Ed.”
While there was always a fun side to T.C. and John Ed, they could be serious when events warranted it.
“I was at WERC with them during the winter storm of 1993 when so many people lost their power and ability to travel for days,” Coulter said. “We all worked together to get important information to our listeners. We didn’t go home during that time. They were a big part of our coverage.”
Doug Layton, another veteran Birmingham broadcaster, considered Willoughby to be among his closest friends.
“John Ed was the first person I met when I came to Birmingham in 1960,” Layton said. “He was the funniest person I’ve ever known. John Ed could embellish a story so well, you almost wouldn’t recognize the original event even if you happened to have been there. He had that knack for making the most mundane things sound funny.”
For a time, Layton and Willoughby were competitors, broadcasting in morning drive time for different stations.
“That resulted in some interesting battles in the ratings,” Layton said. “But it never interfered with our friendship.”
After Charles’ death in 1996, Layton joined Willoughby as his partner at WERC.
“At that time, talk radio was more about personalities than just people giving opinions,” Layton said. “John Ed was the master entertainer. He was truly an icon in the business.”
Willoughby later moved to WAPI, where he hosted “The Breakfast Club” with his son, J. Willoughby.
John Ed Willoughby retired from full-time broadcasting in 2005. He reunited with Layton shortly after that to host a Saturday morning sports show on several different stations until 2012.
“Everything about working with John Ed was a lot of fun,” Layton said.
J. Willoughby said his father probably didn’t realize how many lives he touched.
“I really don’t think my father had any idea how beloved he was,” he said. “He just had a charisma about him that not everyone has. He had that type of personality that could light up a room.”
The younger Willoughby said his father had a unique way of connecting with people – whether it be friends, strangers or a radio audience.
“He was so unpretentious – what you heard on the air was who he really was,” J. Willoughby said. “My father was so kind to people, even the ones he only knew casually. He would bring Christmas cookies to the people who worked at the place where he took his dry cleaning. My father enjoyed making people smile. He was a character. The mold was broken when God made him.”
Growing up as the son of a natural comedian had an unusual side, Willoughby said.
“My father was funny even when he didn’t want to be,” he said. “Just like all fathers do with their sons, he would get mad at me occasionally. But even when he was mad, he would say something funny and make me laugh. Sometimes that would get me into more trouble. But I couldn’t help it – he was just that funny.”
As talented as his father was on the radio, the banquet circuit may have been his real forte, J. Willoughby said.
“To see him as master of ceremonies of an event – be it the Touchdown Club or Red Elephant Club or whatever – was to see him at his very best,” he said.
Whether John Ed Willoughby was behind a microphone, at a speaker’s podium or in front of a lunch counter, he spread his special brand of humor and goodwill.
And that was no accident. ϖ
