Joe Bevilacqua Celebrates 35 Years in Radio by Adding Sixth Holiday Special

Dec. 21, 2007 - PRLog -- Waterlogg Productions announces Joe Bevilacqua's "Willoughby and the Professor" will return to the airwaves, Christmas Eve, December 24, at 5:00 pm., on XM Radio, and public radio stations nationwide.

Bevilacqua's first "Willoughby and the Professor" audio stories was recorded on an early model Panasonic home cassette tape recorder his father bought him in 1971. The 12-year old immediately took to it and soon was holding the external microphone that came with it with his right hand and making the sound effects and played records on his portable lime green plastic children's record player with his left.
"I was short of a one-man band," admits the 48-year old veteran, award-winning radio producer. Bevilacqua improvised half-hour stories doing all the voices himself.

In 1990, singer-songwriter and WNYC Radio host David Garland asked Bevilacqua to contribute to a new spoken word program, on WNYC-FM in New York City, and collaborated on a series of scripts with Robert J. Cirasa.
"The characters quickly began to take on more complex, mythic dimensions," said Bevilacqua.

The story revolves around a Professor and his boy assistant "puckering" around the globe and through other dimensions in a vain attempt to "cure the world of all its ills," only making the world worse with each installment. Bevilacqua voiced most of the hundreds of characters in the new series, with Lorie Kellogg and Margaret Juntwait playing some if the female roles.

"Willoughby and the Professor" are just one of six Christmas radio specials created by Joe Bevilacqua, airing through December 25. The holiday programming ranges from four-minute essay to a one-hour compilation of his best holidays stories: “The Joe Bev Holiday Treat,” featuring his childhood creations, Willoughby and the Professor, and a rare recording of Daws Butler, the voice of Yogi Bear, as “Sleepy Santa.”

“These stories are for the entire family,” beams Bevilacqua. “I created them so that radio listeners could have a respite, this holiday season, from all the depressing news and trite record spinning.”

Bevilacqua has edited and written several books, including Daws Butler: Characters Actor, the authorized biography of the voice of Yogi Bear. A frequent contributor to National Public Radio, He has won many awards, including a Silver Reel from the National Federation of Community Broadcasters for A Guy Named Joe Bevilacqua. His radio documentary Lady Bird Johnson: Legacy of a First Lady won best radio documentary at the 2001 New York Festivals. Most recently, Bevilacqua won a New York Festivals for his 2006 All Things Considered tribute to cartoon legend Joe Barbera. Bevilacqua has also written, directed and acting in hundreds of radio dramas for NPR and XM Satellite Radio. In addition, he writes three to five articles per week for The Ellenville Journal in Ellenville, NY. He also contributed a number of articles, essays and cartoons to the premiere issue of Orange Magazine. “Joe Bev” and his wife and co-creator, Lorie Kellogg, live in their uniquely cartoonish home in the woods of Napanoch, NY, with their three dogs, George, Gracie and Zasu, and their two cats, Offica Pup and Krazy Kat.

More "Joe Bev" holiday programming can be heard on NPR stations nationwide, through December 25, and online at: The Public Radio Exchange: http://www.prx.org/series/22441.

For a station carriage list, e-mail joebev@joebev.com.

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Waterlogg Productions is a multimedia company specializing in radio, print and web, founded by Joe Bevilacqua,

Website: www.joebev.com