R.I.P.: Mitch Faulkner, Atlanta R&B Radio Legend

Mitch Faulkner

Veteran Atlanta radio DJ Mitch Faulkner died last week of cardiac arrest, his brother Arvester Faulkner said. He was 64, reports The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Faulkner, over the years, was heard on numerous Atlanta radio stations including jazz station 91.9/WCLK-FM, former R&B station 1570/WIGO-AM, V-103 and Kiss 104.1. He was also creative director of “The Tom Joyner Morning Show” for a time.

But his calling card for more than three decades was voice-over and imaging work for TV stations, ad campaigns and hundreds of radio stations worldwide, including stations in London, Nigeria, Brazil, the Bahamas, Jamaica and Denmark. His nickname was “The Voice,” given his skills at cutting promos.

He also provided the voice for Janet Jackson’s “Control” tour in 1987 and Tyler Perry’s early stage plays.

“He never met a stranger,” said Arvester. “If you were with him for two minutes, he’d make you feel like the most important person there was. He treated the executives and the guy cutting the grass exactly the same.”

Faulkner was inducted into the Georgia Radio Hall of Fame in 2018. But given his level of modesty, he chose not to attend the ceremony, working his weekend shift on Classix 102.9 that night instead.

Mike Roberts, the former V-103 morning man who now owns a station in Macon, hired Faulkner at WIGO in 1982 as an assistant program director and host. He loved Faulkner’s humility.

“He was a guy that did not put himself in front of everybody else. He was the guy that was always crediting other people,” Roberts said. “He’d do things without asking for anything in return. And he cared about radio and how it should focus on community and not dollars and ratings.”

Faulkner grew up in the small town of Hopkinsville, Kentucky, where his older brother Arvester got him interested in recording equipment. Faulkner as a teen recorded a promo about voter registration for the local NAACP chapter. It was so good, he got hired by a local radio station. “He loved immersing himself in the technical aspects of production,” Arvester said. “He knew how to compress the sound to make his voice sound bigger. His production hit you in the face.”

Arvester was working at 11Alive in Atlanta when his younger brother followed him to the city and soon nabbed a series of jobs at multiple radio stations, including powerhouse FM station V-103. In 1987, Mitch Faulkner became the first program director of the new R&B station Kiss 104.7, which would later move to 104.1. He would work on and off with Kiss over the next three decades.

In the late 1980s, Mitch Faulkner started On Mic Productions with Arvester. It eventually became Faulkner’s primary job. He would build out four digital studios and have 11 employees at its peak.

Rick Party, a former V-103 jock who is now the voice of ESPN SportsCenter, said Faulkner inspired him to go into voice-over production. “Whenever I do my voice-over work for ESPN,” he said, “I hear little pieces of Mitch. He may be gone but he lives on in everyone he touched.”