Burn, baby! Burn!

Tonight at 7 p.m. Life and Times is airing a feature on KJLH, the Stevie Wonder-owned station that Channel 28 calls "the radio voice of south L.A."

This is a good time to mention an upcoming book on the original AM radio voice of black Los Angeles, Magnificent Montague. He was the top disc jockey on KGFJ in 1965 with a signature phrase he would shout when he really liked a song: "Burn, Baby! Burn!" Then came August and the Watts riot.

I'm falling asleep in my home in Brentwood, fifteen miles and a universe away from the madness, when all of a sudden I hear that chant on the TV news.

Burn, baby! Burn!

Wait a minute. That's mine. The rioters are screaming it? They can't do that! They can't steal what I invented. They can't twist it around, make it sound like what it's not.

Montague's influence in Los Angeles was so great that he still gets recognized by fans decades later. His book, written with L.A. Times Calendar writer Bob Baker, is called (what else?) Burn, Baby! Burn! It looks to be a good addition to the written history of modern Los Angeles. It will be published in October by University of Illinois Press.

Edited Saturday 11:25 a.m.