Beloved DJ who started career in SF dies

Dusty Street, a trailblazing female radio disc jockey who started her career in San Francisco and became a recognized voice on Los Angeles radio station KROQ-FM, died last week at her home in Oregon. She was 77.

Her death was announced on Oct. 21 on social media by Geno Michellini, a former DJ at KLOS-FM in LA. “I have been in Eugene the last two days at Dusty Street’s bedside,” Michellini wrote. “The numerous afflictions that she has been so indomitably fighting these last years finally caught up to her. I am writing with a broken heart to say that Dusty left us tonight.”

He added that she “died peacefully, quietly and surrounded by love in a beautifully serene location overlooking the most beautiful lake you could ever want. As befitting the queen that she was.”

Paul Wells, former music director at San Jose-based KSJO-FM, wrote on social media, “She was the Queen, and mentored many of us.” 

Street’s career began at KMPX-FM in San Francisco, where she was one of the first female DJs on the West Coast, according to an online post from her most recent employer, SiriusXM Radio. KMPX was known for playing experimental and psychedelic music. Her next gig was at KSAN-FM in SF, according to Variety. 

Emilio Castillo, bandleader of Tower of Power, wrote on Facebook that Street played his band’s debut album “East Bay Grease” on KSAN and eventually the entire album. “She’d have us all up to the station in the middle of the night and let us play any records we wanted,” Castillo wrote. “It was always a great time with a lot of laughs and partying.”

Street joined KROQ-FM in 1979 and “held court in the evenings” through 1996, becoming a star of the radio waves in Southern California, the post from SiriusXM said.

Street was recently featured in the “San Francisco Sounds” documentary, a two-part series celebrating SF’s “musical and artistic renaissance” of the 1960s and 1970s with music by Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, the Doobie Brothers and more.