Band announcer Joe Bullard is the voice Florida A&M’s rivals love to hate

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – When fans and alumni flock to Bragg Memorial Stadium on Saturday for Florida A&M University’s homecoming game, the reigning Celebration Bowl champion won’t be the only draw. Just as many people will come to hear the Marching 100 perform with longtime band announcer Joe Bullard on the loudspeaker.

Affectionately known as the “Voice of the Marching 100,” Bullard has spent five decades as the announcer for Florida A&M’s band. Combining petty barbs and clever retorts against the Rattlers’ opponents, Bullard became the voice many teams in the Southwestern Athletic Conference love to hate.

Bullard, a Florida A&M alumnus, describes his ascension to become the Voice of the Marching 100 as pure coincidence. In 1975, Bullard followed his roommate to band practice, where the legendary Florida A&M band director William P. Foster asked Bullard to fill in temporarily for FAMU’s band announcer at the time during a Thursday night practice to time the halftime show. After being invited to announce for the band in Miami at the Orange Blossom Classic, Bullard earned a permanent position.

“[Dr. Foster] said, ‘Congratulations, Mr. Bullard, you’re now the Voice of the Marching 100.’ [The former announcer] would come to practice and then you wouldn’t see him because he thought he was going to get it back. But Dr. Foster made that decision,” Bullard said.

Bullard became the official announcer for the band in 1975, and the position has taken him all over the globe, from announcing for the band in Paris to doing so at President Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1993. Since Foster’s retirement in 1998, Bullard has worked under Foster’s successors, former band directors Julian White and Sylvester Young and current director of bands Shelby Chipman.

While times have changed since Bullard first became the announcer, he speaks with current band members and his family to get his witty wordplay up to today’s standards.

“By staying connected and listening, I go to band practice [and] I hit the kids with the new slang. My grandson is 11 [years old], so he knows all the rap songs, and I just mix all that together,” Bullard said. 

Bullard was inducted into the Florida A&M Hall of Fame in 2010 and into the National Black Radio Hall of Fame in 2022 for his work in radio at WHBX in Tallahassee, Florida.

Andscape spoke with Bullard about his career as an announcer for the Marching 100 and his broadcasting legacy. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What should we expect from the Marching 100 this season?

Muni Long’s Made for Me, it’s gonna kill them. The instrumentation of the band itself – and when you hear those instruments play that song – it would be a chill over wherever we’re playing the game. Everybody knows the words, so they’re gonna be singing out loud. Trust me, they did it when they played ’Cause I Love You by Lenny Williams in Orlando last year. They did it at homecoming when they did Deborah Cox, Nobody’s Supposed to Be Here. It’s just certain songs gonna get them, Before I Let Go by Frankie [Beverly] and when they do Blow the Whistle. … Those old-school songs will rule for 2024 because everybody knows the songs.

What are some of your favorite catchphrases you’ve come up with as an announcer?

I remember one time I said, “Grandma said, ‘You can’t say nothing nice about somebody, don’t say nothing at all.’ ” Then I said, ‘Can we have a moment of silence please for that performance?’

Sometimes [I’ll] say, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please be quiet’ or ‘Please be seated, the performance is about to begin.’ One year, Bethune [-Cookman] was running out of time, so they ran off the field. I said, ‘Don’t run, we’re not gonna bite you.’ The biggest one now for Bethune-Cookman and us is when I say ‘Here, kitty, kitty.’ They was mad about that.

[A] good part, too, is when alumni people come back and they get that thick skull in them and they think they can be like them young kids. I said, ‘Call the paramedics. There’s one down,’ because you’ll see some of them think they can go out and do what young kids do. You can’t do that. Your time has passed you.

When we do the [Florida] Classic or something, I say, ‘What time are you coming to the repast?’ They say, ‘We ain’t played the damn game yet.’ I’d say, ‘But you should be used to it by now.’ … Then that year that we lost to Bethune, I think for that first two years, it was losing straight, they got me back. So I got my own medicine back, but it’s all in [the] family like that with the good rivalry. It never gets old.

What are some of your favorite memories as a band announcer?

Bethune-Cookman had a mascot, and to me it looked like a little rat when he ran out the tunnel. Back then Bethune-Cookman wanted their band to be louder, so they had microphones in this section. And I told them that the Marching 100 don’t need those mics – they can put them back. I also said, ‘And get your rat off the field.’ The little thing went just running off the field, and he never came back, not even when they came to Tallahassee.

I’ve had to give some apologies. I got in trouble. We were at Southern University, and there was this weave store with all the weaves and stuff. So when [the] Southern majorettes came out, I said, ‘They’re un-be-weave-able.’ Dr. [Elmira] Mangum was the [FAMU] president then, and she just shook her head. She said, ‘They’re gonna kill us.’

How do you make it out of SWAC stadiums untouched?

I leave and go with the band. The police love me, and I walk with them. But it’s funny because, see, people for a long time, they didn’t know who I was. One time I was on the elevator and [a] lady said, ‘That announcer at FAMU was talking about my grandbaby hair and talking about she was un-be-weave-able.’ I said nothing. Then when it was my time to announce the FAMU band, she said, ‘That’s him.’ … That kind of stopped me from doing stuff like that because that [is] somebody’s daughter and somebody’s child. So now, I keep it within the realm. I don’t say nothing outlandish.

I don’t want to say it’s Black-on-Black crime, but it’s Black-on-Black good times, because you become an enemy during the game, but you all come together after the game. 

Have you noticed a new aura surrounding the band since FAMU is the reigning Celebration Bowl champion?

I think we added class to the SWAC – not saying that they were wack, but the others are not like us. We’re making money now. People are coming to the game, and you’re seeing a lot of us [FAMU fans] that’s supporting [the university].

But if you notice, the other schools don’t want our band [to come], because they don’t want their people to see there’s a difference between experiment and experience. Remember that –  some of them are just experimenting when they know that experience is coming.

Remember, everybody can play the same songs, but nobody has the musicianship of the Marching 100. The sound is going to be different. My point was proven last year when FAMU played Bethune-Cookman’s fight song. Those people never heard as many notes in the song, and they were just amazed. They’re not like us. 

I have a conversation with other directors of bands, as well as announcers. I can remember hearing some high school students were now mimicking me. They’ll try to say some things that I say and may say the wrong thing, and then they say, ‘Well, Joe Bullard said it.’

I like going to high school games, hearing the band and taking time out to go shake their hands, shake the announcers’ hands or the director. That’s a good feeling. As for the community itself, being live and local makes a difference because you got some announcers – as well as radio announcers – that feel that they are untouchable. But people know … they’re going to see me.

As a FAMU alumnus, what has it meant to you over the last few decades being the Voice of the Marching 100?

Being the voice of the band has been an experience. I have met students whose parents were in the band and just to see them together, taking after their parents or a cousin or something, that’s been the highlight for me. Homecoming and classics [are] my favorite time of the year, because that’s when you see people you see every other year. And just seeing that, knowing that my daughter graduated from FAMU with two degrees … I think back to just FAMU total, because I’ve never met a stranger, period. And for the love of that orange and green, I’m prepared to make the orange bright and the green tighter all the time.