R.I.P.: Art LaBoe, Iconic Oldies But Goodies Radio Personality

Art LaBoe (1925-2022)

Art LaBoe, who got his first radio job at 17, went on to fill Southern California’s airwaves for more than 70 years, has died. He died late Friday while battling pneumonia, Joanna Morones, a spokesperson for Laboe’s production company, told the Associated Press. 

He was 97.

He was one of the first to play rock ‘n’ roll on the West Coast and was a pioneer in creating a compilation album, calling it “Oldies But Goodies.”

Through the decades, his night-time love song and dedication show endured unchanged in a sea of constant radio format shifts.

Listeners would call in from Oxnard, Boyle Heights, Riverside; from as far as Phoenix, Albuquerque and Nevada. They were lovers, loners, kids and grandmothers — some who had tuned in since grade school.  Laboe helped them celebrate anniversaries, mourn the loss of loved ones and profess their love. He played intermediary in arguments and blew kisses on birthdays.

His radio program consistently ranked near the top evening time slots and was syndicated in more than a dozen cities, drawing about a million listeners per week. His show was broadcast in Los Angeles for more than 20 years on Hot 92.3 (KRRL-FM).

“He was the voice of the real L.A.,” said Lou Adler, the famed record producer, manager and hardcore Laboe fan. “He reached out and touched people growing up in this melting pot. He cut right through it and understood us.”

Laboe was born Art Egnoian in Salt Lake City on Aug. 7, 1925, in the same decade commercial radio broadcasting first began. He was a loner growing up, he said in a Times profile, a small Armenian kid who “wasn’t a big, good-looking hunk.”

His parents divorced when he was 13 and he moved to South Los Angeles to live with his sister. He started his own amateur radio station in 1938 out of his bedroom. Over the airwaves he was anonymous, and listeners, he was pleased to find, were drawn to his voice.

He attended Stanford University and, after a stint in the Navy during World War II, scored his first job at a station in San Francisco. A general manager encouraged him to adopt the last name Laboe because it sounded catchier.

By the time he returned to Los Angeles in the 1950s, rock ‘n’ roll was beginning to make its furious ascent. Laboe, a plainspoken man with sharp business instincts, dove in and promoted the music.

He broadcast his show live from Scrivner’s Drive-In at Sunset and Cahuenga boulevards, and teenagers showed up in droves to watch, creating traffic jams around the classic hamburger joint.   As the crowd grew, he would lean in to the microphone and say, “Hey mothers, gather up your daughters. Here comes Art Laboe and his devil music.”

During his Scrivner’s days Laboe noticed that listeners often gravitated to oldies, songs that were four or five years old. He began calling them “Oldies But Goodies,” a phrase he later trademarked as other broadcasters began to borrow it.

In 1959, he took the concept and commercialized it, creating one of the first compilation albums of oldies music. His first volume (there were 15 total) stayed on the Billboard Top 100 chart for more than three years.

Those collections, along with his radio show, promoted countless music groups that may have otherwise been forgotten: the Shirelles, the Platters, Eddie Holman, Brenton Wood.

“You don’t replace people like Art Laboe,” said author-historian Harvey Kubernik. “His reach was monumental. He was a disc jockey, program director, concert promoter, label owner, columnist.”

His family, he used to say, were his listeners.

Approaching 90, he remained healthy and active, doing push-ups and pull-ups. And he still came on the radio every Sunday evening with “The Art Laboe Connection Show,” which he began broadcasting from his home when the pandemic began.

Retirement seemed out of the question.

“Radio,” he told The Times, “is my life.”