If you’ve been wondering where longtime radio personality Sam Topp went, tune in to radio station WLDV 107.9 FM on Sunday nights.
He’ll be there from 6 to 9 p.m., playing jazz and blues – and sometimes talking – but this is Topp with a twist.
“It’s a different vibe, a different side of Sam,” says his longtime friend and WLDV co-owner Sheldon Turnbull. “We have a concept of what we want and it’s jazz and conversation …We want (listeners) to relax, kick back.”
Topp said he plans to air a lot of blues as well as jazz and will take a few minutes out of every hour for conversation which will probably be centered on the music, the artist and maybe some cultural or historical information about the time period when the piece debuted.
“We’ll see where it goes from there,” he said.
Exactly how the program develops is “wholly up to Sam,” Turnbull said. It will be called “Jazz and Conversation with Sam Topp.”
One thing it won’t be, both men indicated, is a copy of “Topp Talk,” the free-wheeling radio call-in show that Topp hosted on WVWI Radio One-AM for nearly 17 years, airing a heavy dose of local politics and current events and trends.
Topp said his first broadcast of that show was Aug. 19, 1996. He was master of the microphone three hours a day, five days a week until about four weeks ago.
“It was not a planned departure. I’ll just say that,” Topp said.
Radio One changed management April 1. Alma Francis Heyliger said shortly after the change that she had a one-year option to buy the station and, in the meantime, would be making a lot of programming changes. She did not return a message left for her at the station on Thursday.
But a new call-in show, called “Opening Doors” and hosted by Iris Kern, is airing at 9 a.m. in Topp’s old time-slot.
“I’ve built a nice relationship with a lot of people,” Topp said. That may mean some of his fans will tune in to his new show, but then again, they may not like jazz. “I’m not assuming anything,” Topp said, but added, “I’m hopeful.”
Growing up in rural Virginia, he was infused with blues, Topp said. It was the music standard.
On the radio and on the street, “If it wasn’t gospel, it was blues,” he said. His introduction to radio was as a student at a college station in Chicago where he volunteered to host a three-hour blues show three nights a week.
Topp said he wants to create a cozy atmosphere on Sunday night, “kind of like a smokers’ den. I hope it’ll turn some people on” to jazz and blues.
As for the conversation aspect of the show, “I always try to find some way that people can see what they have in common … We’re closer than we think,” he said.
Turnbull, Kevin Wenner and Derek Joseph started WLDV three years ago. Turnbull said they built its two broadcast stations, one on St. Thomas and one on St. Croix, “from the ground up.” The stations contain identical equipment so that WLDV can operate fully from either location.
Some staff are based on one island and some on the other, and “some of us go back and forth,” Turnbull said. “No borders, no boundaries, one Virgin Islands. That’s our mantra.”
