'Tempo Italiano' celebrates 15th anniversary year
The first show of the "Tempo Italiano" radio program aired Jan. 4, 1998.
The show began celebrating its 15th year at the beginning of this month and will continue to do so throughout the year with special events and musical performances.
Host, founder and co-owner John Richetta wants to pay proper tribute to the community-engaging show he and his wife Pam worked to create and sustain.
Richetta says he started researching content for the show in 1997 when he was around family and friends reminiscing about Italian home-life and playing dance music.
When someone requested that he play some Italian music, the wheels began turning.
The show's first home on the radio dial was on WEEX-AM 1230.From there he worked to establish a niche radio program that has united a community and put the Lehigh Valley on the map for Italians in areas such as Staten Island and Indiana due to current web-streaming capabilities.
Richetta says one of the memories that stands out the most from the show's run was from New Year’s Day in 1999 when he woke up to The Express-Times headline “Tiff Raises Temperature of Tempo Italiano.”
The article referred to a more than a half-million dollar lawsuit WEEX-AM 1230 filed against the show over property rights when Tempo Italiano decided to move to WEST-AM 1400.
Bartolotta was also the show’s first live caller.
“Louis Prima’s 'Jump, Jive n’ Wail' was the first song I requested and we’ve been doing that ever since,” Bartolotta says.
As a former Italian restaurant owner of Bella Luna in Easton and Bartolotta's Schaefer House in Phillipsburg, Bartolotta collaborated with Richetta on an on-air cooking show “In the Kitchen with Tuttie” for "Tempo Italiano." Richetta jokes that he would get Bartolotta riled up on-air because he was so serious about his authentic Italian cooking.
Jump Jive And Wail - News
“Louis Prima's 'Jump, Jive n' Wail' was the first song I requested and we've been doing that ever since,” Bartolotta says. As a former Italian restaurant owner of Bella Luna in Easton and Bartolotta's Schaefer House in Phillipsburg,
Those who love to dance to swing and jazz music will get their chance to jump, jive and wail during the Alvin Community College Big Band Concert on February 4. The 13th Annual Evening of Big Band Music by the Kurland Street Band will begin playing the
swing italiano come ad esempio Renato Carosone, Fred Buscaglione, il quartetto Cetra ed anche le pietre miliari dello swing americano, riproponendo i grandi successi di Louis Prima (di origine siciliana) come Just a Gigolò, Jump Jive and Wail.
Purgatory is being in a grocery store, not finding the 1 thing you need and Jump Jive N Wail is playing.
- Jump, Jive, An' Wail - One good thing about him, he knows how to jive and wail ♫ 
@ do you remember one really bad snow storm in NY...and Say What Kareoke? Jump Jive & Wail guy? Yeah...that was me lol. Hiiii!
Mom just found a 
Jump jive and then you wail away!! [Dances in her GAP khakis and pastel polo shirt]