R.I.P.: Radio Personality Tony 'The Tiger' Taylor Was 86

Tony “The Tiger” Taylor, who hosted mid-days at Top40 WQXI 790 AM in the mid-1960s, has died of leukemia.

Taylor, whose real named was William Wahl, was 80, according to Rodney Ho to ajc.com.

Tony Taylor

Kent Burkhart, who hired Taylor when he was the manager at WQXI (“Quixie in Dixie”), remembers hearing Taylor on a New York station and recruited him down to Atlanta in 1965. His fake, snappier, radio-friendly name was given to him at the station, Burkhart said, a common practice at that time.

“He was a very bright, sharp-sounding disc jockey that everybody loved,” Burkhart said.

Taylor left Atlanta for a time to work in radio in New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles. Once he returned to Atlanta in the mid-1970s, he did a lot of voice-over work over the years, including the first commercial spokesman for Atlanta-based Home Depot. He opened his own ad agency until his retirement in 2006.

While away from Atlanta, Tony was successful in the 12-3 slot at WOR-FM. He moved to Metromedia’s WIP in Philadelphia where he was named the Bill Gavin Program Director of the Year in 1969. Metromedia transferred him to their Los Angeles station, KLAC. After about a year, he was lured back to New York and WNBC. He also became the youngest NBC staff announcer, at the time, and was a host of the highly regarded program Monitor on the NBC radio network.

He was inducted into the Georgia Radio Hall of Fame in 2008.

While at the ad agency, he’d do some fill-in work at Quixie on weekends. Here’s an audio sample of Taylor’s work from 1983 on April Fool’s Day pretending it was the mid 1960s.