The American disc jockey Art Laboe, who has died aged 97, may have been the first person to recognise that a rock’n’roll song could enjoy a life beyond its few weeks in the charts. In 1959 he popularised the phrase “oldies but goodies” by using it as the title for an album he had compiled, consisting of hits, all barely a year or two old, by such artists as the Penguins, Etta James, the Five Satins and the Teen Queens. It sold well enough to become the first of 15 volumes in a series released on his own Original Sound label, establishing a template for others to follow.
Laboe had been broadcasting jazz and swing music on radio stations in California since the 1940s. He switched easily to rock’n’roll on its appearance in the middle of the subsequent decade and became identified with the new music by its young audience, who thronged to watch him doing his show live from a drive-in hamburger joint on Hollywood’s Sunset Boulevard. He was still broadcasting well into his 90s, and taped his last show on the day before his death.
