“REELIN’ IN THE YEARS”: Well-known sportswriter and radio DJ Bob Labbe is celebrating his 52nd year in broadcasting this September

Story By Ava Malone | Photos By Joshua Berry | Living 50 Plus

Traveling down the road in Huntsville in 1958, four-year old Bobby, as his mother called him, asked his dad to turn up the radio. Perry Como was singing “Catch a Falling Star.” That moment is one of the first memories Bob Labbe has which started his lifelong love of music and eventually led to one of the most distinguished careers in Huntsville’s broadcasting history as September 2024 marks his 52nd anniversary in the medium of radio and television.

By 1960, Santa was leaving a stack of 45’s under the Christmas tree every year. With a small collection of records, his bedroom became a makeshift radio station. A flashlight on a stand became a microphone. He created a playlist and announced the song and artist before playing the record on his turntable. Playing disc jockey is one thing, but dreaming of being a DJ is another. The dream of becoming a DJ came a few years later when at nine years old, he scanned the dial and heard WLS broadcasting out of Chicago. WLS was regarded as one of the top radio stations in the country and listening to that live broadcast started Labbe’s lifelong dream.

In the years to follow, Labbe was your typical little boy riding bikes and playing baseball and football with the neighborhood boys. He was competitive in sports and became an elite All-Star baseball player, but one of the highlights of his young life was going to Pizitz Department Store, located at what is now Parkway Place, with his mother where DJ Jim Kell of WAAY radio was broadcasting live from inside the store. An avid lover of vinyl, he remembers asking the crowd to stay back from Kell’s equipment so the records wouldn’t get scratched. The relationship between Labbe and Kell grew into a lifelong friendship.

By the time Labbe was 18, Kell was working across town at WVOV and knew Labbe wanted a job in broadcasting. He called program director Art Wikle at “easy listening” WAHR radio and told him that he knows a young boy who wants to be in radio and added, “He has the desire to make it.” Labbe started his broadcasting career on the top floor of the Times building in downtown Huntsville as a DJ at WAHR playing jazz music every Saturday night.

In the Summer of 1973, after going to the station numerous times and “bugging” WAAY General Manager Wayne Johnson, Labbe made a career move and worked the graveyard shift, playing America’s top 40 hits with the on-air name “Big Jim O’Brien” from midnight to six in the morning. Johnson told Labbe, “I gave you a job because you kept bugging me. I can either hire you or kill you, but today I don’t feel like being a murderer.”

A year later Labbe accepted a daytime shift at up-and-coming WVOV radio, which also played the top 40 hits, and the position came with an increased audience. An unexpected change in management resulted in a complete turnover of all on-air personalities in late 1974. Now married and a new dad, “Times were hard, and it wasn’t easy knocking on Johnson’s door to ask for a position back at WAAY radio but, being the friend he was he offered all he had available at the time which was a part-time fill in position. I was humbled and grateful for the opportunity to continue to do the work I so loved,” said Labbe. “Broadcasting was my passion, but limited hours didn’t pay the bills. I had to work radio, a full-time job at the Jetport along with occasional football referee assignments in order to get by.”

In the following years Labbe became well acquainted with Rick Davis at WAAY-TV Channel 31 who told him the TV station needed a weekend sports anchor. Davis suggested they consider Labbe for the job and after an audition Labbe went to work for the TV station as weekend sports anchor. The career change came about in early 1979 and would soon make Labbe the top-rated sports personality in the Huntsville market.

After five years, Labbe was promoted to the weekday sports anchor and Sports Director position which he held until he departed from the station in 1991.

During his stint in television, Labbe became known for his extensive coverage of local sports including numerous entertaining segments such as the Sports Challenge, which pitted Labbe against various weekend athletes in their sport of choice. Viewers from across the Tennessee Valley challenged him to take on those more skilled. In addition to amateur athletes, Labbe also personally interviewed some of the biggest names in sports. Those included Paul “Bear” Bryant and Muhammad Ali.

Labbe was the reporter who asked Bryant the last question of Bryant’s career at the Liberty Bowl game in Memphis. The question and answer were used by all the major networks. One of his most famous “skits” was the segment where he boxed Ali. Within the action, Ali knocked out Labbe and in typical Ali style proclaimed his latest victim “The Great White Dope.”

Prior to exiting television in early 1991, Labbe started a live, Friday night weekly radio program with WLRH-FM, Public Radio in Huntsville. The program began in November 1990, taking Labbe back to his original dream of being a DJ. By the time he returned to radio, the industry had changed to a more recorded format, but Labbe was determined to have his program live and reminiscent of the way radio once was. “The idea was to take listeners back to a time when radio was about the art of music and the personalities that produced the sounds of yesteryear,” said Labbe. In essence, he was reeling in the years gone by thus, the name of his program, “Reelin’ In The Years.”

The small collection of vinyl records started during childhood with the help of his mother has turned into a collection of more than 20-thousand 45’s, which he spins on two turntables located in the studio of WLRH. “The warm sound of the original 45 rpm records, which sometimes include a crackle, is music to my ears and my listeners tell me they have the same feeling,” said Labbe. “There’s nothing like dusting off an old record, dropping the needle on the disc and reliving memories of years gone by.”

In November 2024, Reelin’ In The Years will celebrate its 34th anniversary. More than 1,600 live episodes and more than 7,000 hours of live on-air broadcasts have enriched the audience while Labbe has provided his time and efforts as a volunteer for Public Radio. Labbe has personally interviewed hundreds of the biggest names in pop music history and plays these interviews along with their music and some of the artists’ history for his listeners every Friday night from 9:00 p.m.–1:00 a.m.

Over the years, Labbe has won high praise from his peers including being inducted into the Huntsville-Madison County Athletic Hall of Fame and has been nominated for both the Alabama Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame and the Alabama Music Hall of Fame. His writing talents for numerous publications across the Tennessee Valley for almost 30 years have also earned him numerous awards from the Alabama Press Association.

“I have had a fabulous career in broadcasting, and I don’t plan on slowing down anytime soon,” said Labbe. “Broadcasting has been my passion since I was a small boy pretending to be a bigtime disc jockey and as long as I can continue filling the local airwaves, I’ll be there.”

With 52 years of broadcasting under his belt, Labbe has had a long journey, made many friends, interviewed many legends and loved the road that has brought him full circle. It’s possible to say, like the song he heard as a little boy, he did “Catch a Falling Star.”