Dusty Street | |
|---|---|
| Born | October 19, 1946 Palo Alto, California, U.S. |
| Died | October 21, 2023 (age 77) Eugene, Oregon, U.S. |
| Occupations | Disc jockey, radio host |
Dustine "Dusty"Frances Street (October 19, 1946 – October 21, 2023) was an American disc jockey. As one of the first women to work on-air in FM radio on the West Coast,[1] she was associated with stationKROQ in Los Angeles in the 1980s, and was inducted into theBay Area Radio Hall of Fame in 2015.
Street was born inPalo Alto, California,[2] the daughter of Emerson Street, a journalist and labor organizer,[3] and Mildred Ruth Sutherland Street, a journalist.[4] She graduated fromCubberley High School in 1964; she attended but did not graduate fromSan Francisco State College.[5]
Street began her radio career in San Francisco,[6] where she worked withTom Donahue atKMPX in the late 1960s and atKSAN from 1969 to 1979. She worked at KROQ in Los Angeles from 1979 to 1989, with a year away at other stations in the city.[1] She was credited with being one of the first women DJs on West Coast radio[7] and with introducing several major artists and genres to American commercial radio, includingBilly Idol andSiouxsie and the Banshees.[4] "Nobody in the country was playing what we were playing when we started," she recalled, in an oral history interview about her time at KROQ, conducted byLiz Ohanesian in 2007.[5] "It was all about the freedom. It was never about the money, it was never about the acclaim, it was all about the freedom."[8] She was known for her sign-off slogan, "Fly low and avoid the radar."[4]
From 2002 to 2022, Street hosted onDeep Tracks andClassic Vinyl, channels onSirius XM,[9] from her home in Cleveland. She and her longtime colleagueRaechel Donahue[5] were part of the Moonlight Groove Highway radio project of theRock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004,[10] and part ofNPR's Airplay documentary project in 2011.[11] She also had a podcast, theFly Low Show.[12] In 2023, she appeared in the documentarySan Francisco Sounds: A Place in Time.[13] She was inducted into the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame in 2015.[14]
Street died in 2023, at the age of 77, inEugene, Oregon.[8]