Talk Is His Trade and His Talent

Things are a little different on “Billy’s Place.”

For starters, there are no bitter women tirading against cheating men in front of TV cameras and a studio audience. No applause for the antics of feuding roommates. No raucous laughter when teenagers publicly disrespect their parents.

“People watch that because there’s nothing else on,” Billy Walker says. “I want to bring some wholesomeness back, some reality back.”

For 2 1/2 years, Walker, a Palmdale resident, has been the host of “Billy’s Place,” a cable talk show that offers up a serving of news, entertainment and educational issues.

Walker’s is one of about 40 programs on Channel 25, the Van Nuys public access channel of Tele-Communications Inc., the nation’s largest cable-system operator.

If Walker’s take on talk is a bit different, consider his life and its many dimensions:

Audiences know him as Billy, an amiable talk show host who has held audiences with the likes of the Rev. Zedar Broadous, president of the Valley chapter of the NAACP, rapper Ahmad and basketball star Kenny Anderson.

To members of the Greater Missionary Baptist Church in San Fernando, he is Pastor Walker.

And to kids and co-workers in the Crenshaw area, he is P.O. Billy Walker, a no-nonsense juvenile probation officer who can speak in the authoritarian tones of the law or in the caring tones of a big brother.

As disparate as the roles may seem, the cord of continuity is this: talk. Meaningful talk. The kind, Walker says, that can bring people together, that instructs, and uplifts and heals.

“While you have so many elements pulling us apart, there aren’t a great deal of elements pulling us together, and I just want to be one of those elements pulling us together,” he explains.

The mere possibility keeps Walker’s mouth moving: on the air, at church, in the office.

Performing came to him naturally. His father ran The Green Door nightclub in Pontiac, Mich. His mother owned Miss Irene’s, a soul food restaurant. Soul singer Jackie Wilson became a close family friend.

Then there was the allure of Motown, 20 miles away, close enough to hold Billy and his 10 brothers and sisters in awe. They grew up making yearly trips to Detroit for the Motown Revue, and afterward, “We would be in the frontyard playing like we were the Temptations.”

As a student at Tennessee State in Nashville, Walker majored in communications, and worked after class as a disc jockey hosting a jazz program and an early morning gospel show. Later he attended divinity school in Nashville.

After he moved to Los Angeles, he found that his own dream of a career in entertainment meshed with his frustration with talk shows on television. So he enrolled in a public access production program.

Who cares, Walker asks, if some woman’s boyfriend and her sister are sleeping together?

“There’s nothing real that you can gain from that,” he says. “Tell me how to make it in today’s world, get an education and be a better person.”

On the set of “Billy’s Place,” Walker banters easily with singer Freda Payne.

“Camera One? Can you get a shot of her? Now, you’ve got to do at least one line of ‘Band of Gold,’ you’ve got to,” he pleads as a smiling Payne sings a line from her decades-old hit.

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On another show, he and Broadous discuss the North American Free Trade Agreement’s impact on the local community, Proposition 187 and community-based policing.

Unlike on regular television, “Billy’s Place” airs irregularly, depending on the availability of time slots. Walker’s next show is scheduled to air Thursday.

Though he is critical of some shows, Walker does have role models in film and television: Robert Townsend, Bill Cosby, and particularly actor Denzel Washington, both for his style and his substance.

“He’s family oriented and he’s down to earth,” says Walker, who is married, has four children and, like many in the entertainment industry, is loath to reveal his age. “There are certain roles [Washington] won’t take, certain language he won’t use. I really admire that a lot.” And, Walker adds, “he can dress!”

Until his hoped-for break comes, Walker goes about his other work. One day recently he is sitting in his office on Crenshaw Boulevard as three teenage boys come for mandated visits. Two had been arrested for robbery, one for bringing a weapon to school.

One 16-year-old smiles as he shows Walker that he has completed his community service and has a money order to pay court-ordered fines. Walker lavishes praise on him, but when Walker turns and asks the boy’s mother about his behavior at home, she tells of him repeatedly asking to go to parties after curfew, or to go where he shouldn’t.

The praise ends and the preaching begins.

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“Once she makes her decisions, that’s it,” Walker says. “Don’t come back at her five times. It might seem unfair, but guess what? It might save your life. You know what happens at those parties. Fools drive by, get to shootin’. You look at a guy the wrong way. Anything might happen. She don’t want to hear about you being dead or in jail.”

The mother nods her head approvingly.

“Let me tell you, good brother,” Walker says to the boy. “Don’t give her a reason to call me. I’ll take your freedom.”

It takes a lot to reach young people, Walker says. But he tries, mostly by showing he cares. He shows up at school unexpectedly, attends athletes’ games, and telephones. He often prays for the kids too.

Sometimes he can use his entertainment work to the advantage of his other careers.

Walker arranged for industry friends to talk to the kids at Sylmar Juvenile Hall. Actors Tommy Davidson, Willard Pugh and Tommy Ford visited. So did singer James Ingram and actress Loretta Divine.

At the church, rapper and actor Tone Loc spoke to kids, who seem to reach out to Walker.

“They’ll go and talk to him about things that they won’t go and talk to their parents about,” says Alphonse Jones, chairman of the deacon board. “He’s a dynamic young preacher.”

His spiritual responsibility is the basis for all that he does, Walker says.

On a recent Sunday, standing at the pulpit, dressed in long white ministerial robes, he preaches in a style built on call and response.

Walker slides easily into a gravelly-voiced rhythm, as consistent as the back-and-forth movement of the fans in the hands of the choir behind him.

“Folks think we crazy and out of our minds because we love folks that hate us,” he says, periodically wiping his brow with a handkerchief. “Folks think we ain’t wrapped too tight when we reach out to do something for people we don’t even know.”

Then he tells of the apostle Paul, who, undaunted, delivered a tough message to a man not yet ready to hear his truths, a parable that clearly holds special meaning for Walker.

“As Paul preached this sermon, there was something about what he said,” Walker preaches. “There was power in his words. There was spirit in his words.”