In a way, the disembodied head is the perfect symbol for a radio DJ from the Golden Age: the invisible voice danced directly into your ear late at night in the dark, maybe hidden under a pillow as the voice - intermixed with exciting, rhythmic, forbidden music - illicitly stole away sleep.

Hunter Hancock - who played jazz, R&B, rock 'n' roll and gospel on the radio in Los Angeles from 1943 to 1968 - has died at 88. He wrote his own very lively life story for the Doo-Wop Society website in 1999:

I was born in Uvalde, Texas, in 1916, and raised 90 miles away in San Antonio. I graduated from high school in 1934. Over the next few years I had, at my best count, 22 different jobs, including salesman, bank clerk, chauffeur and drummer. But perhaps my most dramatic job in those days was singing in a vaudeville troupe, including a stint at a Massachusetts burlesque club.

Then along came Pearl Harbor. I was classified 4-F by the draft board because of the effects of a childhood operation. So I went back to San Antonio to find myself a steady job. In September 1942 I walked into a small radio station, KMAC, and they asked me to read some commercials and news copy. Apparently I did okay, because they hired me on the spot.

....I fled Laredo at my first opportunity and took the train to Los Angeles, where every other 4-F radio announcer was already looking for work. The best I could find at first was a temporary spot at a station in a neighboring town, but an employee there mentioned to me that there was an opening at KFVD, a small Los Angeles sundown station. [off the air at sundown]

Next morning I was sitting on KFVD's front steps at 338 S. Western Avenue when the program director arrived. They hired me that day...as the Weekend man. Working Sundays sounded like a bad deal, but I was happy to get the work. More importantly, it gave me the biggest opportunity of my life. In April 1943, Todd Clothes in downtown L.A. bought a one-hour show on Sunday--during my shift--to appeal to the Negro community. The program director felt I should play jazz, which sounded like a good idea to me at the time, because I was unfamiliar with black tastes in music. The show, called "Harlem Holiday," became modestly popular. My theme song was Chick Webb's "Holiday in Harlem," featuring the voice of young Ella Fitzgerald. I was one of the first radio men to play Cecil Gant's "I Wonder" in 1944.

In 1947 the station let me expand to a daily half-hour show which I called "Harlematinee." I started off playing jazz on this show too. But only a couple of days later, Jack Allison, a salesman from Modern Records, came to see me. He told me, "Hancock, you're playing the wrong records. If you want to reach a huge Negro audience, you should be playing 'race' records." I didn't know what race records were, but he gave me a list of what records were selling to blacks in the South. I didn't recognize any of them. But I was so impressd by his material that I took a chance and played two of his records that afternoon. Almost instantly, other local distributors showed up at the studio with other race records, and by the end of the following week my show was 100% race music. Nowadays we call it rhythm and blues. Without realizing it, I became the first disc jockey in the western United States to play R&B.

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