Happy 95th birthday to a man who not only is a Guinness World Record holder for broadcasting, he literally saved an entire era of music by people of color from being whitewashed and became an icon of Southern California Hispanic culture. #oldies #oldiesbutgoodies #lowrider #chicano #rhythmnadblues #rockandroll #doowop #crusing

There are a great many people who have written about music history, specifically the original Rock and Roll era, and tell you that it began with Elvis. After the former truck driver from Tupelo went into the Army in 1958, Rock and Roll was considered “dead”, and really didn’t gain any serious cache until the arrival of The Beatles in the U.S. in 1964. These same people, many of them cisgender, straight white men, will also tell you there were no Rock and Roll bands prior to The Beatles, either.

Sadly, any even cursory glance at the influences of these two truly iconic artists bears witness to the truth: both acts have repeatedly stated just how important early Rock and Roll acts were to their mega-careers. I have always know better, and as the years have gone by, a small, but vocal group of historians attempt to teach about Rock and Roll’s Black origins, only to be dismissed, because these artists weren’t “Rock and Roll” enough in their worldview.

Art Laboe, October 2018, at KDAY studios. Photo by Russell Contreras, courtesy of the AP.

I have always stated how fortunate I believe I am to have been born in Los Angels in 1968, with all of my formative years spent there through 1986. Mind you, we were incredibly poor, my parents were in and out of jail, we were sometimes homeless and lived in some of the roughest but most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in the county, especially Wilmington, the harbor area of the city of angels. These places were alternately called the ghetto or barrio by white, middle and upper-class snobs, places that weren’t redlined by the racist white establishment. It was simply home to us.

I was exposed to cultures many would not even know existed because they weren’t the stereotypical El Lay lifestyles represented, so in a sense, it was almost like a secret. This was reflected in broadcast media of the area, especially on the airwaves. We often didn’t have a television, just like many economically disadvantaged people, but everyone had a radio.

Barbara Lynn, 1963. Photographer unknown.

And we had something incredibly special: We had Art Laboe. Rarely mentioned in the same breath as other legendary DJ’s like Alan Freed or Murray The K, Laboe has been broadcasting for 77 years, and holds a world record unlikely to be beaten any time soon for this achievement.

Laboe, of Armenian descent, was born Arthur Egnoian in Salt Lake City, Utah, and moved to Los Angeles in the 1940’s. He attended college there and received a degree in radio broadcasting. He joined the Navy during the Second World War and worked as a radio telegraph operator, broadcasting to ships at sea. During this time, he also took a job at KSAN, playing Jazz, Swing and Big Band music on the legendary San Francisco radio station, where we would take requests from listeners, reading them live on air, a tradition he continues to this day.

“Hello? I want to dedicate this to my dad that’s in Lancaster (prison) and I miss him tonight…”Teenager caller to the Art laboe connections’s request line, 2018

He moved back to L.A., continuing to work as a DJ. And then Rock and Roll happened. He was the very first DJ to play this new type of teen-centric music on the West Coast, as many would not broadcast it, because it was almost completely Black artists on independent l...