RIP: Huggy Boy, Los Angeles disc jockey
For many people growing in Los Angeles, disc jockey Dick “Huggy Boy” Hugg provided their first exposure to rhythm and blues music. For five decades, Huggy Boy was a true legend in the Los Angeles radio market.
And now, Huggy Boy is dead at the age of 78.
The Los Angeles Times has an excellent obituary on Huggy Boy. Here’s a couple of choice paragraphs:
By the early 1950s, Hugg was broadcasting a late-night show from the window of Dolphin’s of Hollywood record store, then a hot spot for R&B music. Hugg is credited with exposing white teenagers to Fats Domino, Chuck Berry and Little Richard.
“He was one of the pioneers who first played rhythm and blues,” said Don Barrett, whose laradio.com website tracks local radio. “It came at a time of growing conflict between parents who were listening to Doris Day and their kids who all of a sudden could hear this forbidden sound. Huggy really captured the imagination of young people back then.”
Throughout a radio career that took him to as many as nine local AM and FM stations, Hugg’s programs were so popular with Latino audiences that he often jokingly referred to himself as “the Dick Clark of the Chicanos.”
He willl be missed.
The cool advertisement was borrowed from my friends at the DooWopSocietyof SouthernCalifornia.
I LOVE HUGGY BOY! I LISTENED TO HIM ON THE RADIO 24/7 WHEN I WAS A KID. I GREW UP LISTENING TO THIS GUY AND ALL THE OLDIES AND GOOD MUSIC FROM BACK IN THE DAY. I DONT THINK ANYBODY COULD EVER COMPARE TO THIS MAN, ART LABOE COMES SO VERY CLOSE BUT COULD NEVER TOP HUGGY BOY!
Dear friends, me too. I loved Huggy and the time shared. It was a hard time socially, but I would not trade it for anything. I listened to Huggy Boy, and Hunter Hancock
late at night and set my head right. Also Johnny Otis was a fine teacher with his TV show and along with Huggy and Hunter were a major factor in forgetting who’s who in the race game. I’m 69 and can still see how this time and it’s people have effected many of the major musical entertainers and the decades that followed.
” Vernon and Central ” I can remember Huggy Boy saying, it was a mysterious and magnetic place where music could do it’s work on avenues previously unavailable or
unknown. Here race was not the issue. Cool music from the original artists. Shirley Gunther and the Queens and Johnny Guitar Watson played up stairs in a place in Arcadia
The place was electric and few times ever could match the excitement. I was 15 and dressed up to get in, little red haired freckled kid who never forgot this wonder filled time .At intermission, I sat on the back step’s and smoked a cigarette with Shirley and talked, she was wonderful and made me feel like someone also. I got there by listening to Huggy Boy. Thanks Brent Pehrson