Mary Turner Pattiz, who as Mary Turner was a silky-voiced disc jockey at KMET, the album-oriented rock station that was the soundtrack of Southern California within the Nineteen Seventies and early ’80s, earlier than leaving radio to change into an habit counselor and philanthropist, died on May 9 at her dwelling in Beverly Hills. She was 76.
The trigger was most cancers, stated Ace Young, a former KMET news director.
KMET was a hard-rocking upstart within the early Nineteen Seventies, with its laid-back jockeys delivering a gradual stream of latest music from bands just like the Who, Pink Floyd and Steely Dan, together with barely naughty patter — a little bit of sexual innuendo, limitless stoner jokes — that was a welcome counter to the Top 40 hits churned out by AM stations.
They have been proud renegades, mixing surf stories with news protection of occasions like the Mexican government’s spraying of its illegal marijuana crops with paraquat, a lethal poison. (When Jim Ladd, a late-night D.J., instructed his listeners to cellphone the White House to protest the observe, 5,000 callers jammed the White House switchboard.) Their vibrant yellow billboards have been ofteninstalled the other way up. They had a signature cheer, “Whooya” (the “w” was silent), that each one the jockeys labored into their packages; the neologism was a refinement, Mr. Young stated in an interview, “of the coughing sound we made once we smoked an excessive amount of pot.” Ms. Pattiz — then Mary Turner — was often called “the Burner,” a nickname stated to have been given to her by Peter Wolf, the lead singer of the J. Geils Band, for her seductive supply and attractiveness, and she or he had the prime nighttime spot, from 6 to 10 p.m.
When main bands got here to city to carry out or promote a brand new document, they made a cease at KMET to be interviewed by Ms. Pattiz. She was soft-spoken and conversational, a gentle interlocutor who once teased Bruce Springsteen by asking, “Do you actually know a reasonably little place in Southern California, down San Diego method, the place they play guitar all evening and all day?” (She was quoting “Rosalita,” a track from Mr. Springsteen’s second album.) Most necessary, she let her topics speak with out interruption. For his half, Mr. Springsteen was so taken along with her that he requested her on a date, and at his performance on the Forum in Inglewood, Calif., the evening after the interview, he devoted the track “Promised Land” to her.
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