He is being remembered for his programming philosophy, “music has no color,” that transformed a single station in the Bay Area into a model that reshaped Urban Contemporary radio. Former KBLX General Manager Harvey Stone died on August 4.
For 31 years, Stone guided KBLX from Inner City Broadcasting’s acquisition of KRE through the station’s sale to Entercom in 2012. The Quiet Storm format that became KBLX’s signature grew out of Stone’s vision, blending contemporary R&B, smooth jazz and mellow instrumentals under the station’s “Soft and Warm” branding.
The independently and minority-owned radio station built a broad audience while staying deeply rooted in the African American community, and through the 1990s and into the 2000s the station consistently ranked among the Bay Area’s top stations. At a time when many advertisers overlooked Urban radio, Stone pushed back on outdated assumptions by demonstrating the buying power and loyalty of KBLX’s audience, work that is credited with shifting how national advertisers viewed minority-owned radio.
Stone was inducted into the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame in 2015, and he was known within the California Historical Radio Society as its “godfather” for his role in helping the organization secure Berkeley’s historic KRE building as its first permanent home. He also created the Stone Soul Picnic, which grew into one of Northern California’s premier live music events.
