Dusty Street sits on a stage at KGO-TV in San Francisco on July 19, 1970.
Robert Altman/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Dusty Street, a pioneering DJ best known for her time at Los Angeles-based alternative rock station KROQ-FM and later SiriuxXM, died Saturday in Eugene, Oregon. She was 77 years old.
Her boyfriend Geno Michellini, who worked for many years at Los Angeles-based station KLOS-FM, shared the news on Facebook.
“I’ve been at Dusty Street’s bedside in Eugene for the last two days,” Michellini posted Saturday. “The numerous sufferings with which she has had to struggle so relentlessly in recent years have finally caught up with her. I am writing with a broken heart to inform you that Dusty has left us this evening. She died peacefully, quietly and surrounded by love in a wonderfully tranquil place overlooking the most beautiful lake one could ever wish for. As befitted the queen she was. Tonight I lost one of the best friends I ever had and the world lost a radio and music legend… She was all of that and more. There will never be another Dusty Street. The queen is gone, but we will never forget her.”
Most recently, Street worked at SiriusXM for more than 20 years as host of Deep Tracks and Classic Vinyl.
“We have lost one of our own,” SiriuxXM posted on Facebook. “Dusty Street died after 77 joyful journeys around the sun. And yes, Dusty Street was her real name. One of the first female rock jocks on the West Coast, Dusty worked at KMPX and KSAN in San Francisco from 1967 to 1978 before moving to Los Angeles, where she performed evenings at KROQ from 1979 to 1996. … We are heartbroken.”
Street was known for being outspoken and opposing the Parents Music Resource Center’s attempt to apply a rating system to rock music. She once said she was fired from KROQ for being a “renegade” as the station instituted “increasingly tight” control over programming.
In 2015 she was inducted into the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame. Earlier this year, she participated in the Epix documentary “San Francisco Sounds: A Place In Time,” which profiled Bay Area recording artists popular between 1966 and 1976, including Santana, Sly and the Family Stone, Tower of Power and the Doobie Brothers, Jefferson Airplane and Janis Joplin.
Street once remarked that people often asked her if her name was real and that people were surprised to hear that it was not a stage name. “My father’s name was Emerson Street. We used to live on Emerson Street in Palo Alto, which was pretty fun. Emerson Street over Emerson Street,” she said.