Joe May began broadcasting for Jack Scheper at WHCO in Sparta, Illinois on August 11, 1968. He hosted the Country & Western Round-up each afternoon at 3:00. He opened the station at 6am spinning music, giving the farm reports, the news and weather. During the rest of the day after his board shift he made sale calls, wrote and recorded commercials. In addition he broadcast football and basketball games thoughout the area in the evenings. The news was a rip and read operation. It sometimes led to some tough moments reading cold copy with typos.
He spent 15 months at AM 1230 a great entry level radio station. The station under Scheper and Mike Arnold has produced three Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame announcers. May in 1983 and later the late Dan Schnoecker along with Dennis Stork were also inducted into the Hall of Fame. The fifteen months spent at the station were invaluable in learning all facets of entry radio.
The station broadcast over 100 football, basketball and baseball games a year. On this page Joe will share stories and high-lights of his 38 years of broadcasting especially his days at WIBV radio in Belleville where the great Norm Greenburg was the GM and hired him to work there in 1969. May's sales training was by Gil Moore, the BEST radio sales executive May's ever known. May shared play-by-play gigs with the all -ime "Classi" Dave Bollone. It was an honor to work with David. Dave Bollone stories could fill a book. He and Bob Gagen were as a good of a broadcast team as it gets..
Joe has broadcast on the following radio stations...WHCO IN SPARTA, WIBV IN BELLEVILLE, WGNU IN GRANITE CITY, WMRY IN BELLEVLLE, WOKZ IN ALTON, KXOK IN ST. LOUIS, WINU IN HIGHLAND, WESL IN EAST ST. LOUIS AND WXOZ IN BELLEVILLE/ST.ROSE.
He was the Sports Director at Channel 50, an over the air television station (low watt) in Alton and for years he produced sports shows for his own company River Bend Productions on Charter Cable Television thoughout Madison, St. Clair, Clinton and Monroe Counties.
He along with his buddy Dave Taynor started and published the official magazine of the St. Louis Baseball Cardinals as the Editor/Publisher.
Joe also hosted and produced the Whitey Herzog Television show seen on as many as 15 televison stations througout the Midwest from 1981 to 1985. Dave Taynor contacted Whitey and got the exclusive TV rights to the show.
May also hosted the Whitey Herzog syndicated radio show which was heard on over 70 stations thourhout the country in the early 1990's.
He was the voice of St. Louis University basketball for five years from the late 1970's to the early 1980's and at the same time broadcast University of Illinois basketball. When the two teams played on the same night Tom Calhoun, now the PA voice of the St. Louis Blues broadcast Illinois basketball and Joe took the Billiken games.
Joe also has broadcast basketball games for McKendree, Belleville Area College, (now SWIC) Southern Illinois Edwardsville as well as football games for Washington U. in St. Louis.
In addition to broadcasting 1000's of high school games which included the state finals from Assembly Hall on the campus of the University of Illinois as well as from Peoria and Illinois State University in Bloomington he has called the blow by blow description of Leon and Michael Spinks winning the Bellevile boxing championships.
May broadcast Triple A baseball, the Springfield Redbirds, who were a farm club of the St. Louis Cardnals and featured such players as Leon "Bull" Durham, Terry Kennedy, Tom Herr, Tito Landrum, Mike Ramsey, Glenn Brummer, Keith Smith, John Fulgham, Luis Deleon and was managed by Hal Lanier. At the same time Tony LaRussa was the skipper at Iowa City and Jim Leyland as the manager at Evansville.
He has broadcast Wresting, Cross Country, Track, Volleyball (very poorly,) soccer, (even worse) ) and Motor Sports. (Not very well)
Joe and Elaine are proud parents of three girls, two grandsons and two grandaughters.