Frankie Crocker; Influential Disc Jockey

Frankie Crocker, about 63, a disc jockey who was an influential figure in the urban/contemporary radio format in the late 1970s and early 1980s. One of the first VJs on cable’s VH-1, Crocker was also host of the syndicated TV show “Solid Gold.” Crocker grew up in Buffalo, N.Y., and studied law there before beginning his radio career. He worked at stations in Chicago, St. Louis and Los Angeles. But his greatest success was in New York, where he pioneered the urban/contemporary format, which included music from jazz and R&B; to Barbra Streisand and disco, for station WBLS. Ray Rossi, a New York radio personality, said that Crocker’s smooth style and trend-setting musical taste at WBLS appealed to a broad range of New Yorkers. “I grew up in Gravesend, Brooklyn, an area not known for racial tolerance,” Rossi said, “but you heard WBLS on every shop you went into. They loved WBLS, and Frankie Crocker was the king.” Crocker worked at Los Angeles stations KUTE in 1979-80 and KGFJ from 1968 to 1972. In early 1994, he did the “Quiet Storm” show via satellite to WBLS in New York from his home in Coldwater Canyon. In Miami on Saturday of pancreatic cancer.