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Laboe says he knows people his age always say this kind of thing, but he is nostalgic for the old days — a time when people used to have a little more kindness for each other. Everyone is capable of love and affection, if they could just have a little bit more of it for each other.

Search-Icon Created with Sketch. KQED is a proud member of. Always free. Sign In. KQED Inform. Save Article Save Article. The California Report. Listen 11 min. Sasha Khokha. Feb 14, Failed to save article Please try again. Courtesy Art Laboe. I never knew who Art Laboe was, or what he meant to so many Californians, until I moved to Fresno, and started dating someone who grew up on Laboe's music.

Art Laboe developed a radio persona that was daring and rebellious for its time. Courtesy Art Laboe After all, Laboe has been spinning oldies and love songs since Watch a tribute to Art Laboe produced by videographer Bryan Mendez: Laboe spends hours every day playing songs that are about the heart.

Navy during World War II. Eventually, he landed a job as a radio announcer at KSAN in San Francisco and adopted the name Art Laboe after a boss suggested he take the last name of a secretary to sound more American. Over the decades, Laboe maintained a fan base, especially among Mexican-Americans who followed him from station to station.

Current and former gang members were some of his most loyal fans. Laboe later returned to the Los Angeles airwaves on another station. They love him. Sections U. They all knew me. Stars like Jerry Lee Lewis, Bo Diddley, Ricky Nelson and doo-wop groups like the Penguins all were on Laboe shows in El Monte or at the Hollywood drive-in back then, performing sets for fans between records Laboe would play for them to dance to. A million! And this is just an old bunch of old songs together. The listeners still call and write non-stop in hopes of getting their names or those of their loved ones on the air.

Laboe takes the top off a box in his mailroom filled with a few hundred letters, the vast majority of them from a captive audience — prison inmates are among his most loyal listeners, he says. This is just the haul from the most recent few weeks. He is so well-known, he notes, that he tried an experiment once, telling listeners to just address their letters to Art Laboe, Palm Springs, California: The mail got through just fine, he says.