LOS ANGELES — When Art Laboe was a child, his mother couldn't pull him away from the radio.
"I listened to soap operas. I listened to news. I listened to all the announcements," he told the Los Angeles Times in 2009. "I was enthralled with this box that talked."
The disc jockey, who got his first radio job at 17, went on to fill Southern California's airwaves for more than 70 years. 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."
