Don Steele
Radio deejay “the Real” Don Steele was a high-decibel star on KHJ “Boss Radio” in the 1960s.
"It's 3 o'clock in Boss Angelese! Hey hey HEY! Thitz me. The Real Don Steele!" he would scream through dashboard speakers and teen hangouts during radio's afternoon drive time on a typical Friday. "A billion-dollar weekend there. . . . I got nothing but groovy, those groovy golds. We're gonna kick it out here on a fractious Friday, boy. Got to get a set outside that [unintelligible] work resembling blowing bubbles in a glass of water! Jumbo city! [Pause] Take a trip. When you chase 'em daylight!"
Steele was on the air the first afternoon KHJ shifted to rock and, although later the music was called "oldies," he never stopped spinning the records or spouting the shtick.
Steele's fertile mind and glib tongue were also responsible for his personal mantra familiar for 40 years: "Tina Delgado is alive, alive!," which was echoed knowingly by teenagers across Southern California.
From 1968 to 1975 he was on television Saturday nights with "The Real Don Steele TV Show," a rock 'n' roll dance program with guest stars such as the Rolling Stones and the Supremes.
In the 1980s, Steele broadcast a syndicated radio show, "Live from the Sixties," which was heard in about 300 cities.
In addition to his own show, Steele made guest appearances in television movies, as a disc jockey in "The Day the Earth Moved," as himself in "KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park," as a boat coordinator in "Anything to Survive" and as — what else — XRAY the Deejay in "Runaway Daughters."
In movies, Steele played fast-talking hipster characters in what became cult films by Roger Corman and others.
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