Disco Radio Star Paco Navarro Passes

Paco Navarro (Photo: YouTube)

Former WKTU/NEW YORK air personality PACO NAVARRO -- whose work coincides with the disco boom -- succumbed to complications of liver cancer and other ailments on AUG. 8th at a hospice facility in SADDLE RIVER, N.J., the NEW YORK TIMES reports. He was 82. 

After playing Latin music on Spanish-language radio stations in LOS ANGELES, NEW YORK and his native PUERTO RICO, PAQUITO NAVARRO (his birth name is MANUEL) hosted a salsa show on WKTU’s AM sister, WJIT, before moving to WKTU when it flipped to Disco in 1978. Within months, WKTU overcame WABC to become the highest-rated station in the market. 

NAVARRO altered his on-air persona to suit the new dance craze. “Unlike his former WJIT delivery — higher pitched and with words tripping out at an awesome clip — his WKTU voice is a deep, lyrical, Latin-accented bass that combines playfulness with unabashed sensuality,” the NEW JERSEY newspaper THE RECORD said in 1978. When the disco era petered out in the early '80s, WKTU flipped to Rock and changed its call letters to WXRK; NAVARRO left in 1985 and was in and out of radio after that.

He is survived by his wife, MARGARITA SOSA NAVARRO; two daughters, EILEEN and MARIA NAVARRO; two sons, HECTOR and RICHARD; and eight grandchildren

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