If Toni Tennille isn't doing anything Thursday, she should show up in Sturgeon Bay for Jonathan Little's induction into the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association (WBA) Hall of Fame.

Tennille might not remember Little's name after all these years, but she owes him, and she knows it. Little in 1976 was the program director at WISM-AM, a top-40 radio station in Madison. One of the iron rules of top-40 radio was that you played hits over and over again, until everyone was sick of them, and then you played them some more.

Little, who was not famous for following the rules, used to listen to tracks on albums beyond those the record companies released as singles. One day in 1976, he stumbled on a silly but infectious song on an album by the Captain and Tennille. Little played the song on WISM-AM, which was a highly popular music station in Madison, though FM radio was on the scene and soon to assume the music radio throne.

Madison listeners embraced the dopey but lovable song. They kept calling WISM asking to hear it again. Little contacted the record company and said they might be sitting on a hit. The record company disagreed. Little played it some more.

"It was our most requested song," he was recalling Tuesday.

Finally the record company woke up, and released "Muskrat Love" as a single. It was a runaway success and for many years, when she introduced the song in concert, Tennille would thank the program director in Madison who recognized a top-40 hit when he heard one.

Jonathan Little has usually gone with his instincts, and they've taken him a long way, all the way to Thursday's fete in Sturgeon Bay, where, coincidentally, Little was born. I think it is fair to say the WBA Hall of Fame is long on executives and somewhat short on programmers and personalities. Since Little has done just about everything there is to do in radio, his resume includes time in management, but his passion has always been the music and the people who make it. He has been a consistent champion of Madison and Wisconsin artists. Little's Hall of Fame induction is both inspired and deserved.

"It's pretty cool," he said of the honor. Little's voice -- instantly recognizable to two generations of Madisonians -- hasn't changed much over the years and neither has his laid-back persona. His family, though, is making a big deal of the ceremony. His wife, father and daughters -- in from Phoenix and Denver -- will attend.

Retired Packers president Bob Harlan is speaking at noon Thursday and Willie Davis, the former great Green Bay defensive end, will be inducted into the WBA Hall of Fame that night alongside Little (the other inductees are Milwaukee radio executive Mike McCormick and Burlington broadcast educator Terry Havel). Davis owned radio stations in West Allis, Milwaukee and around the country.

Little grew up in Montello, and his route to the Hall of Fame began at UW-Madison in the spring of 1962, when he worked for WLHA on campus. The call letters stood for Lakeshore Halls Association and its reach -- the station was all of 25 watts -- was such that it couldn 't be heard much farther than the hall or the lakeshore.

"But it was experience," Little said.

His first paying job was reading the news at WSPT in Stevens Point. He got $1.25 an hour and when the UPS man walked through the door, Little's radio career was almost over before it started. They chatted and it turned out the fledgling delivery company was looking for drivers and paying $3.25 an hour. "I agonized," Little said, but he stuck with radio.

After stops here and there -- including one at WDUZ in Green Bay -- Little wound up at WISM in Madison. As program director and on-air personality, he distinguished himself by scoring interviews with touring artists and then incorporating those interviews into the music programming.

Little interviewed Jimi Hendrix between 1968 shows at The Factory on Gorham Street (a poster from that concert once sold for $25,000). He got 15 minutes with Elton John, and in 1976, after Little interviewed Harry Chapin, and told Chapin how much he admired the way he ended his shows with the sing-along "Circle," Chapin invited Little on stage at the Dane County Coliseum to participate in the song.

After WISM, Little worked at several other Madison stations and is proud of having helped launch WMMM-FM in 1991. Today, he is still active, as an executive with Troy Research, a broadcast and movie market research firm, and as personal manager for a number of artists.

Toni Tennille may not make the induction ceremony Thursday night, but, hey, Willie Davis will be there.

"It's nice to be going in with a defensive end," Little said.

Contact Doug Moe at 608-252-6446 or dmoe@madison.com.