The first time that the angel “Angel Baby” Rodríguez listened to Art Laboe on the radio, was 13 years old, in his father's garage in the city of the industry. Laboe was presenting “Nite Owl” (1955) by Tony Allen and the champions. “His voice caught me first,” Rodríguez told me, “that very distinctive tone, and then listened to the listeners to call. The crudeness of connecting with a listener, of turning the album, was something.”
Rodríguez became a DJ, at the Laboe mold, at first playing albums for Aztlan Radio, the Friday of Location Program in Kucr in Riverside. “I did not sleep on a Friday night for more than 20 years, from my 20 years to 40,” he told me. He now organizes “The Art Laboe Love Zone”, keeping his hero's legacy alive: three hours of live radio, emanating five nights a week from a study in Palm Springs, which bring “music to someone”, in the words of Angel Baby.
I am one of those someone. He was a teenager when I started listening to Laboe in the 1970s. I spent nights with him on the radio for the rest of his life, until he died on October 7, 2022. By then I already discovered Rodríguez, who took over the Laboe Tribute Broadcast in 2023, with his own “radio voice” of Old School long distance and anyone who burned the band at both ends.
Now, with the algorithms healing Spotify and Sirius, with less voices of DJ live anywhere, it is said that the American terrestrial radio is dying. But not Art Laboe's voice.
The most beloved man I have known, without a doubt, was Laboe. He stopped just over 5 feet, but commanded the theaters full of thousands of people, standing on the stage in the brilliant sapphire or the suits of Lamé de Oro, while four generations of fans shouted their name.
Born from an Armenian family in Utah, Laboe was always fascinated with radios and transmission. At the age of 9, he took a bus, alone, Los Angeles to see his older sister, and finally moved to California, attending Stanford, serving in the Navy and becoming DJ in Krla, the Oldies station. His live music magazines of the 1950s, at El Monte Legion Stadium, were the first dance concerts integrated in California. DJ on the radio live continuously for 79 years, and broadcast a legendary music reviews almost so long.
If Laboe did not invent the dedication of the song, he perfected it. From 1943 in Ksan in San Francisco, Laboe read the dedications to loved ones sent by letter of missing wives in World War II, and after the calls sending songs to a lover who is next to him in bed, or sitting alone in the dark, separated by migrant work, military service, a prison sentence or work.
DJ Angel Rodríguez, who is carrying out a tribute to Art Laboe, and a fanatic for a long time, Proxie Aguirre, 82.
(Oscar Aguila for Times)
The resonant voice of Laboe resonated in the neighborhoods of Riverside where I grew up, from the cars and the open windows, a basic element of Culture In particular, the Chicana culture of Lowriders, Pendletons and Palkis. Even now, my neighbor Lydia Orta, 75, talks about going to her concerts in the mountain when she was 9 years old, with her grandmother, while her son Johnny, 45, plays archived transmissions of Laboe through speakers in her patio.
On August 9, in the farm collective in Riverside, more than 500 Laboe fans of the entire Southland gathered to celebrate the man, two days after what would have been his centenary. On stage, Rodríguez, organized in his own characteristic style: without gold, but a fedora, black sunglasses and a white shirt from Guayabera. His mango, Angel Baby, derives from the iconic song of the same name recorded in 1960 by Rosie and The Originals, when Rosie Hamlin was only 15 years old, still a student at Mission Bay high school in San Diego, writing poetry about her boyfriend. Rodríguez is the prince of the Oldies now, Laboe remains the king, maintaining CultureWith his intense devotion to music and community, I live.
At the concert, I met Mary Silva, 73, who led with her daughter. “I grew up in East la,” he told me, “and there were 14 brothers before me … we listened to Art Laboe in Florence. I still listen to every night, in 104.7”. Your favorite song? “'Tell him how it is', because I always say it as it is.” The classic is from Aaron Neville.
Just on stage were Elizabeth Rivas, 72, from San Bernardino, and her grandchildren Rene Velaquez, 34, and Raymond Velásquez, 16. Rivas has listened to Laboe and now Rodriguez for decades, and her favorite song is “Tonight”, from Sly, Slick and Wicked. The granddaughter Rene said: “She taught us to listen.” Rene's choice was another from Sly, Slick and Wicked: “Confess a feeling.”
Near them was Henry Sánchez, 54, from my former neighborhood in Riverside, who grew up listening to Laboe on 99.1. Your favorite? “Bring Brenton Wood an opportunity. And Sal Gómez, 49, also from Riverside, loves the “Baby You Got It” of Wood, who recalled from Krla.
On stage, Rodríguez, introduced by Joanna Morones, the producer of Laboe radio, took the microphone and said: “Thank you a God who feels honored to be sitting in the art chair five nights a week, receiving phone calls and dedications of all the listeners. It gives me chills to sit there.”
When Sly, Slick and Wicked took the stage, glowing in three -piece and hats costumes, their crispy and perfect dance movements, the main singer told the crowd: “Art Laboe used to say that 'Confessin' to feeling 'was his most requested song at night, and for 50 years they have kept us singing.” The audience joined: “Baby, my love is real.” Time passes, love changes, but the song is still the same.
And yet, these great meetings are not where I hear devotion. Take thread through darkness, tracking the melancholy of the separation and intimacy of the night, while the voices of Angel Baby and Art Laboe come through radio speakers.
On Monday after the celebration, I heard 9 pm at midnight, as always. At least eight land radio stations carry “The Art Laboe Love Zone”, and thousands of fans transmit it in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and abroad.
Rodríguez, who drives the round trip of 110 miles from Riverside to Palm Springs every night after working as the head of Head Street signs for Riverside County, had passed through Snail Mail and DMS on Instagram and Facebook, collecting the dedications he had read. Morones had chosen Laboe's recordings for the night. From outside the past, Laboe spoke with a woman who wanted him to fly a kiss through the radio to a distant man.
Rodríguez read a letter from Pope Lito, from Wilmington, now in Delano. And then a dedication of Proxie Aguirre, which had appeared in the celebration of the birthday. Aguirre is 83 years old now, a fan of Laboe since he was 15 years old. It was photographed on the cover of a Laboe compilation album, Eyes Sparkling, Forever Young. He was driven from Venice to Riverside for his sister -in -law.
“This is from the new proxie, for her 35 -year -old husband, Eddie,” said Angel Baby's Dulcet voice. “She says: 'Eddie, I love you very much.”
Then: “Let's drop the needle on the disc, Baby Bubba.”
Susan Straight's tenth novel, “Sacrament”, will be published in October. It has a lowrider funeral in San Bernardino and a nurse who sings like Mary Wells.
