"... and shocked an older generation still listening to Frank Sinatra and Big Band music. Laboe is also credited with coining the 'oldies, but goodies' phrase.... His radio shows gave the families of incarcerated loved ones, in particular, a platform to speak to their relatives by dedicating songs and sending heartfelt messages and updates.... He often told a story about a woman who came by the studio so her toddler could tell her father, who was serving time for a violent crime, 'Daddy, I love you.' 'It was the first time he had heard his baby's voice,' Laboe said. 'And this tough, hard-nosed guy burst into tears.' Anthony Macias, a University of California, Riverside ethnic studies professor, said the music Laboe played went with the dedications enhancing the messages. For example, songs like Little Anthony & the Imperials' 'I'm on the Outside (Looking In)'... spoke of perseverance and desire to be accepted...."
From "Pioneering DJ Art Laboe, who coined 'oldies but goodies,' dies at 97" (NPR).
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17 comments:
@$$hole that normalized and championed violent predators and helped push the idea on the public that they should be given lighter sentences dies. Too bad he wasn’t beaten to death by a mugger or home invader as UNDOUBTABLY happened to some innocent because of Laboe’s BS.
I've never heard of him, but it seems he was farsighted and ahead of the curve in his business.
My Dad was a cop in El Monte in the early 50s. Laboe would host musical events in El Monte Legion stadium which would invariably lead to fights between what he called “hay buckers from Bakersfield” and Mexicans. The cops would break up the fights by hitting the brawlers on the shins with their hickory night sticks (I still have his), loading them into a paddy wagon and taking them to jail. No one was booked and they were let out in the morning when they sobered up.
Frank Zappa got his start in El Monte. Here’s Zappa performing a doo-wop song in the 60s memorializing those days. https://youtu.be/Z2y7ffr006c
I'm sure he was talked about in one or more of the episodes of "The History of Rock & Roll in 500 Songs". But I cannot recall which ones. Still...he was a difference maker for an industry and a generation, many of whom didn't know his name.
We tend to forget in our hyper-social media era where everything and everyone is a Star (in their own minds) that before our time, anyone who made a splash, or made a name for themselves, had to do it the old fashioned way. They actually had to produce something or affect something, or affect people, more than once, in order to get noticed.
Today you get a million views for making funny faces out of an eggplant.
And People of White (POW) a.k.a. "albinos"? People of Yellow (POY)? Diversity writ large. One step forward, two steps backward. #BabyLivesMatter (BLM)
A SoCal legend… here was a man who “got it”. Cutting through the bullshit and spreading the love.
RIP
"something in the air" by Marc fisher, available at the portal, is a great book on radio DJs, playlist, programming and such.
Nothing on laboe in a word search, though.
John stop fascism vote republican Henry
Darkisland said...
"something in the air" by Marc fisher, available at the portal, is a great book on radio DJs, playlist, programming and such.
Nothing on laboe in a word search, though.
i finished that book about 4 weeks ago, and i couldn't remember laboe either
Thanks, Gordon Pasha. That's the episode of "The History of Rock & Roll in 500 Songs" I was thinking of: Episode 140: "Trouble Every Day" by the Mothers of Invention.
Zappa would continue to insert Do-Wop in many of his songs, such as "What's the ugliest part of your body?"
Segregation in southern California is not much talked about.
Little Caesar & The Romans - Those Oldies But Goodies (Remind Me of You) - 1961
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vglw0kCZkrg
Funny, I'm in my 80s, grew up in SoCal and I don't remember segregation there.
I do remember racism on both sides and the Rodney King beating and riots. But segregation?
Southern Cal never had government "Segregation".
Never heard of this DJ, here's my favorite 1950s song.
"Since I Fell for You" Lenny Welch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7xrQY_FLM4
"Funny, I'm in my 80s, grew up in SoCal and I don't remember segregation there."
True, but I never saw black people in my neighborhoods. But there were ghettos in South Central and Pasadena.
Then there were sundown towns like Glendale, or so I've heard.
No going back.
>>Funny, I'm in my 80s, grew up in SoCal and I don't remember segregation there.<<
Mendez v. Westminster (1947)
https://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-23-2-c-mendez-v-westminster-paving-the-way-to-school-desegregation
Grew up in South Central. Had whites in the '50s, mixed in the '60s then after the '65 riots, mostly black. Now Hispanic. If only I'd been a teen in the '40s when Central Ave was hot jazz and Art Pepper wasn't a junkie.
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