ANAHEIM, Calif. — Radio disc jockey Uncle Joe Benson, whose deep voice rumbled over the airwaves of KLOS-FM, Arrow 93.1, and The Sound 103.1 for nearly four decades, died Tuesday, Feb. 24. He was 76.

“It is with great sadness that we share the news of legendary disc jockey Uncle Joe Benson’s passing,” read a post on the Uncle Joe’s Garage page on Facebook posted early Tuesday, Feb. 27. “Joe passed away peacefully from Parkinson’s disease, Parkinson’s dementia and complications of a fall.”

Accolades from fans, friends and peers in radio soon followed.

“A radio legend silenced,” wrote disc jockey Rita Wilde, who worked for many years alongside Benson at KLOS and The Sound. “Nothing but love and respect. At least you aren’t in pain anymore. Love you forever, JB.”

“What a legend,” commented disc jockey Frosty Stillwell, a former KLOS-FM host on the Frosty, Heidi & Frank morning show. “A giant in radio, a life well lived.”

KLOS also paid tribute on Facebook to one of its greatest disc jockeys.

“Radio lost one of its greatest voices this week,” began a post on the social media platform. “We are so heartbroken to hear that legendary DJ Uncle Joe Benson has passed.

“Joe was a man of the people and a friend to all, whether you met him in person or just heard his big, distinct voice over the airwaves,” it continued. “His life was full of incredible stories that involved pretty much every single rockstar ever. Everybody knew Joe!”

His life was full of stories, period, we learned in interviews with him over the years.

“I come from a working-class family,” he said in a 2021 interview. Thinking he was semi-retired on leaving The Sound in 2017, he landed a new gig within a few months as host of Ultimate Classic Rock, a weeknight show syndicated across the country.

“My grandparents were, my parents were, my wife’s parents were. We always work,” he said. “You’re working on the farm to begin with, where you’re cussing all the time because you didn’t like lifting all that stuff.”

Still a teen, Benson talked his way into his first disc jockey job in 1968 as a student at Loras College in Iowa, mostly, he said, so he could play bands he loved such as the Beatles, Moby Grape, Buffalo Springfield and Jimi Hendrix on the radio.

His professional on-air job was at an Illinois station so small it broadcast out of a double-wide trailer in a cornfield, he said, and in addition to spinning records, he also read the news, obits, and hog reports each day.

At the start of the ’80s, he left a station in Milwaukee for Los Angeles and KLOS. There his knack for storytelling stood out. Benson loved to share stories about the artists and the records they’d made before and after playing songs, he said in 2021.

“I started in October of 1980 (at KLOS), and it was basically put on the record, ‘Here’s such and such by such and such,’” Benson says of many disc jockeys at the time. “I’d go, ‘You know one of the things about Jethro Tull was that Ian Anderson recorded the music first and then tried to figure out what the words were going to be, which is really kind of backward.’

“At some point, a year or two down the road, someone’s going to come up and tell me about that story,” he says. “That’s a payment right there. Makes me feel like I’m communicating with people.”

As news of his death spread on Thursday morning, memories of that style and those stories flooded social media.

“When he was on, it was like he was sitting in your room playing records and sharing anecdotes and stories,” wrote Steven Booth on KLOS’s Facebook page. “He did it without blabbing on too much and was appointment listening, at least for me.

Benson was always more than just a rock radio disc jockey who dropped the needle in the grooves for a few hours and then clocked out. He raced cars and delivered the weekend car-racing news on Sunday nights with “The Rock and Roll Racing Report.”

He wrote detailed rock histories in a series of “Uncle Joe Benson’s Record Guide” books that took deep dives into different genres and artists.

And Benson hosted other specialized programs over his career on the air, too. “Off the Record” was an interview program with rock ‘n’ roll artists talking about their lives and music. “Local Licks” gave rising L.A. rock bands a shot at their first plays on air.

“‘Local Licks’ was such a fine platform for bands to break through on radio, even if you were a runner-up,” wrote Daniel P. O’Donnell on Facebook. “Uncle Joe played our band’s record “Hold On Tonight” and said each player’s name and instrument before playing the 45! Listening in a living room, hearing your record getting played, was such a thrill of a lifetime, especially introduced with that voice and thoughtfulness.”

On “The 7th Day,” Benson played a full album with minimal interruption, on Sunday nights, often introducing new records to the L.A. airwaves, which had many listeners with fingers poised to press the record button on their tape decks every week.

“I used to love listening to ‘The 7th Day,’ just for the last song on an album to have a slow, long fadeout followed by a moment of silence and then Joe’s booming baritone voice saying ‘Ninety-five point five, KLOS,” wrote Rob Perez on Facebook.

“Every Angeleno could relate listening to ‘The 7th Day,’ maybe half asleep,” commented Eric Minassian. “The quiet after the final track, and all of a sudden his deep thundering voice made you jump out of your seat!”

Benson always loved hearing stories about how the music he played and talked about had affected the lives of listeners. In 2017, he talked with us about the enduring importance of a radio station, a format, and a DJ to its audience

“The basic thing, especially in Southern California, people have grown up listening to this music as background, favorite songs, songs that mean something to them,” he said of his role as a constant voice on the air since arriving here in 1980. “Maybe they’ve reached a point where the job isn’t as rewarding as it was, the kids are grown up…

“But the thing you can count on is Uncle Joe playing your song.”

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