R.I.P.: Jimmy Rabbit, Freeform Radio Personality

Jimmy Rabbitt

Jimmy Rabbitt, a pioneering freeform radio DJ who helped expose outlaw country music to Southern California, died of natural causes on Nov. 25, according to Robbyn Hart, a longtime friend and colleague. 

He was 79, according to The L-A Times.

Rabbitt came to prominence during the late 1960s and early ’70s, a transformational period for rock radio. His popularity in the L.A. market may have been greatest during his end-of-the-’60s stint at Pasadena’s KRLA, but it was while DJing at KLAC and KBBQ in the early ’70s that he began weaving country into his rock playlists. He called the blend “outlaw music,” in a phrase that echoed the term “outlaw country” coined by Nashville journalist Hazel Smith around the same time.

Rabbitt became associated with outlaw country, introducing Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings to California audiences while moonlighting as a singer with his band Renegade. His musical career peaked with a songwriting credit on David Allan Coe’s 1976 country hit “Longhaired Redneck,” a song that featured the line, “She says Jimmy Rabbitt turned her on to my last album.” The lyric summed up his appeal as a DJ: Whether he was on the AM airwaves or later on satellite radio, he exposed listeners to music they may not otherwise have heard.

Born Dale Payne in Holdenville, Okla., on Aug. 18, 1941, Rabbitt was the son of an Air Force airman. His father cycled through different posts, so he wound up being raised by his grandparents in Tyler, Texas. After high school, he attended American University in Washington, D.C., for a year — he worked briefly at the college station, ultimately getting thrown off the air for playing Little Richard — before heading back to Texas to attend Tyler Junior College as a broadcast major.

His big break arrived when the mother of local KGKB disc jockey Randy Roberts came into the store where Payne was selling shoes. She loved Payne’s voice and told her son to hire him; he got the next available slot at the station in the fall of 1962. Working under the name Fast Eddy Payne, he stayed on the air from 9 a.m. until 6 p.m. during those early years, starting his shift with country music, playing pop for “housewives” during the day, then transitioning to rock ’n’ roll as soon as school let out.

Payne spent some time in Corpus Christi, Texas, before returning to Tyler to be a program director at KDOK, staying at the station until it left the air in 1964. By then, he’d earned the attention of Gordon McLendon, who ran the powerhouse 1190 AM station KLIF in Dallas. McLendon hired Payne for KLIF, which was run by general manager Charter Payne. Loath to have an on-air personality share his surname, the GM dubbed Fast Eddy Payne “Jimmy Rabbitt.” Years later, Rabbitt claimed the switch happened so fast that he was “shell-shocked,” but the name stuck with him for the rest of his professional life.