Contributor: He DJ'd radio for 79 years. The late Art Laboe's fans are still tuning in

This is read by an automated voice.Please report any issues or inconsistencies here.

The first time Angel “Angel Baby” Rodriguez heard Art Laboe on the radio, he was 13, in his father’s garage in the City of Industry.Laboe was introducing “Nite Owl” (1955) by Tony Allen and the Champs.

“His voice caught me first,” Rodriguez told me, “that very distinctive tone, and then I heard the listeners calling in.The rawness of connecting with a listener, of spinning the record, it was something.”Rodriguez became a DJ himself, in the mold of Laboe, at first playing records for Radio Aztlan, the late-slot Friday program at KUCR in Riverside.

“I didn’t sleep on a Friday night for over 20 years, from my 20s into my 40s,” he told me.Now he hosts “The Art Laboe Love Zone,” keeping alive his hero’s legacy — three hours of live radio, emanating five nights a week from a studio in Palm Springs, that bring “the music to someone,” in Angel Baby’s words.I am one of those someones.

I was a teenager when I first started listening to Laboe in the 1970s.I spent nights with him on the radio for the rest of his life, until he died Oct.

7, 2022.By then I’d already discovered Rodriguez, who took over the Laboe tribute broadcast in 2023, with his own old school “radio voice” and an oldies playlist suitable for dance parties, house parties, long-haul travel and anyone burning the candle at both ends.Now, with algorithms curating Spotify and Sirius, with fewer live DJ voices anywhere, terrestrial American radio is said to be dying.

But not Art Laboe’s voice.The most beloved man I’ve ever met, hands down, was Laboe.He stood just over 5 feet but commanded theaters filled with thousands of people, standing onstage in shimmering sapphire or gold lamé suits, while four generations of fans screamed his name.Born to an Armenian family in Utah, Laboe was always fascinated with radios and broadcasting.

At the age of 9, he took a bus, alone, to Los Ang...