The New York Times recently ran an article titled “Chicano Radio’s Fading Signal,” which implied that Sancho’s cold-blooded ousting from KPCC earlier this year symbolized an era’s end. The 8-by-9-inch photo atop the article showed DJ Dick Hugg at the microphone.
For 50 years, the honeyed baritone and puckish banter of Hugg, a.k.a. Huggy Boy, have held forth on L.A.’s airwaves. He is firmly established as a cornerstone of
Los Angeles pop culture. Lighter Shade of Brown gave props on their record “Huggy Boy Show.” The Blasters’ classic “Border Radio” was, says Dave Alvin, inspired by Hugg’s dedication show on XPRS. Hugg is both icon and family heirloom.
“I have people coming up to me with their grandchildren. They all listen to my show,” Hugg says in a rare moment of immodesty.
Hugg, who won’t give his age (the math says he’s 70-something), is a classic. If Damon Runyon could have conceived of a rhythm & blues disc jockey, it would have to have been Huggy Boy. Chilling after midnight in Canter’s, he looks like Central Casting’s “old record biz” type, a throwback in this shock-jock era. But L.A. embraces idiosyncratic DJs. Unlike Rick Dees, however, whose popularity fluctuates, or Dr. Demento, whose audience turns over every few years, Hugg is a constant. His fans from the ’50s still tune him in, as indeed do many of their grandchildren. For a year and a half, he’s held weeknights 9 to midnight at K-EARTH 101. Before that, 14 years at KRLA — a Chicano-oriented oldies station — delivering a richly eclectic R&B morning show, playing everything from doo-wop to East L.A. proto-punk garage bands to War. His rapport with callers-in gave the show a pronounced vintage regional flavor. He was loose, flirting with the women and telling callers to “cut the cholo crap” when they would lapse into barrio mannerisms. He sees himself as a forefather still hanging in.
“I know the era of personality disc jockeys is over,” he says. “I’m the George Burns of my field.”
But he’s bankable, not quaint, having outlasted many stations for which he’s worked. His K-EARTH ratings are strong (“except if the Lakers are on”), and he still draws big on the record-hop circuit, where many of the oldies he spins are records he helped make hits. He’s presented live shows, including Elvis Presley’s first in California (in 1956, at the Pan Pacific Auditorium), started (short-lived) labels and released oldies albums. But his career is radio.
“When I started, it was rhythm & blues,” he recalls, “then rock & roll, then soul, or Motown, then the Beatles. I always went with it. That’s my secret. Not that changing with the times is some great secret.”
Hugg’s flexibility in the field served him well, especially in his early days broadcasting on KWKW via live remote from the Dumas Drive-In at Whittier and Atlantic.
“I wore Robert Taylor’s gladiator costume from Quo Vadis, and roller skates. See, back then, a DJ was either suave or nuts. I knew I could convince people I was nuts.”
Shortly after, for KRKD, he transmitted nightly from Dolphin’s of Hollywood, the R&B record mecca often visited by industry types, from stars to promo men, at Vernon and Central.
“Back then, you couldn’t just go into any record store and buy rhythm & blues. Dolphin’s was open 24 hours, and every night down there was a big party. I did my show from the window. The people buying records were both black and white. It was different then. More respect. You didn’t worry about if someone had a gun.” (Dolphin probably should have. In 1958, he was shot to death.)
Among Chicanos who embraced rhythm & blues, Hugg and Art Laboe became like Alan Freed and Dick Clark. While they started at around the same time and attracted similar followings, their respective flavors are as different as pepper and sugar. Hugg is irrepressible and chatty, while Laboe’s refined manner suggests a senator graciously addressing his constituency. Laboe’s personal oldies industry (state-syndicated show, Original Sound Records and the “Oldies but Goodies” compilation discs) is considerable, second only to Dick Clark’s. Conversely, Hugg is too mercurial to have built a diverse portfolio. His single durable asset has been being Huggy Boy.
With Hugg on deck, K-EARTH has cornered SoCal’s huge dedication-show audience, which is predominantly Mexican-American. Its total playlist is 500 songs, heavy on the Motown, not to mention schlock-poppers like Neil Diamond and Elton John. In its prime, KRLA had 6,000 songs in rotation, and none of them was “Sweet Caroline.” (KRLA went all-talk in 1998.)
Hugg doesn’t complain. He knows where his bread is buttered and, narrower playlist notwithstanding, still controls his on-air presentation.
“Every show I’ve done has a flow, even on my worst nights. I know how to get a feeling going. And K-EARTH works because the programming is for L.A. Other stations come out here with program directors from the East Coast, who program East Coast oldies. If you know anything about the record business, you know that something could have been a smash in, say, Detroit, and barely scrape by in L.A. K-EARTH plays what people here want.”
