KVPI Ville Platte

KVPI AM, The Legend = https://kvpionline.com/

KVPI FM = https://classichits925.com/

KVPI Ville Platte is the great exception in the modern story of Cajun radio. It began in 1953, part of the postwar spread of small local stations across Acadiana, when towns like Crowley, Opelousas, Eunice, Jennings, and Ville Platte no longer had to rely on faraway signals from New Orleans, Shreveport, or Texas. Even in the late 1950s, when station manager Chris Duplechain predicted that French would disappear from KVPI within ten years, the station refused to follow the easy path of decline. Today, the station is one of staunchest proponents of French-language radio. In fact, Ray Duplechain (a grand-nephew of the station’s original manager) is a regular co-host of the morning show La Tasse de Café.

Photo from Elizabeth Roberts’ 1959 master’s thesis

The slogan, “Keeping Ville Platte Informed,” fits the station’s personality. KVPI has always sounded stubbornly local: local news, local commercials, local music, local voices, and French not as decoration but as habit. The AM side, now KVPI the Legend, mixes classic country with Louisiana music and still carries Cajun Rendezvous, an afternoon show that dates back to the station’s beginning.

Mark Layne gives most of that show’s announcing in French, while Saturday mornings bring the Fred’s Lounge broadcast and a French-language swap-shop program. The famed Fred’s Lounge show switched from KEUN to KVPI in the late 1980s, and has been airing continuously since then. Weekdays include a French newscast followed by La Tasse de Café, the bilingual call-in show simulcast on AM and FM.

Jim Soileau was KVPI’s central figure for decades. With the station off and on since the mid-1950s, and manager from 1976, he became known for French newscasts and La Tasse de Café, which began in 1967, reportedly at Floyd Soileau’s suggestion. Jim saw the show as entertainment and education, even calling it better than a dictionary for listeners trying to recover French words.

The station also has a deep and ongoing relationship with Floyd Soileau. He was a DJ as a teenager at KVPI, though los his job because of an awkward but memorable event. (Read the book if you want the story!! Seriously I can’t put all of the onfo online!)

KVPI’s later voices continued that mission. Charlie Manuel translated English news into French almost by instinct; Jackie Miller now keeps that imperfect, living practice alive, even slipping English into French when modern words resist translation. That is KVPI’s importance: not purity, but survival. French still wakes up there, talks there, sells there, and belongs there.

Some bit of the French News from Aug 6, 2021 – with Charlie Manuel