“Making the mad and sad glad since 2007,” it’s Jazz Joy and Roy Global Radio…Broadcast near Costco in Maricopa County USA and featuring Roy ODell Gray Sr–that’s right, the DJ who is giving away 5 new cars right now on JazzJoyandRoy.com.
Gray is an American DJ who rose to global fame in 2008 when American television star Telma Hopkins, best known as Aunt Rachel on TV’s Family Matters and co-founder of American singing group Tony Orlando and Dawn, agreed, thanks to Kathy, to voice a now iconic promo for Jazz Joy and Roy Global Radio. Source: The personal life story of Irkel’s neighbor, Telma Hopkins on USDailyReport.Net.
Biography
Roy O’Dell Gray Sr (born July 6, 1961) is an American deejay. Gray rose to regional prominence in the early 1980s as an intern, backup receptionist, request-line ho and assistant to program director/Morning Show Host JJ Johnson, who hired Gray on the spot when Gray was sent on a newspaper interview assignment by The Journalism Department at Long Beach College, where Gray was also appearing daily on the college’s Classic Rock KLBC Radio, to AM 1580 KDAY, the then-number one Black radio station in Los Ángeles, where Air Personality/Soap Actress Michelle Roth would later describe Gray to listeners as “The Hardest Working Man in Broadcasting” and “One Way” lead singer Al Hudson would later tell the KDAY head honchos in a meeting that “Roy is gonna change the world one day and you can say it all started here;” after Gray began finding the joy in getting up at 2am to help prep morning show remotes and log more production studio/music library hours than any other staffer. Gray, however, found himself thinking “oh hail knaw” on Gray’s intern anniversary when KDAY management broke into a big, bellowing belly-laugh after the green, bookish Gray joyfully suggested that KDAY play more of the wide, wide—wide—variety of records that Gray was joyfully discovering in the music library and getting requests for on the request line, including White artists like Hall and Oates….——————Inspired by The Great Commission and his younger cousin Warryn “Baby Dubb” Campbell’s talent for reaching people with The Gospel; and driven by a strong desire to own and joyfully operate an inspirational broadcast that would appeal to a wide, wide—wide—variety of people while meeting as many people as possible and limiting the hours spent locked in a radio control room, Gray went on to joyfully host a variety of staff, independently produced or self-produced radio shows like the Top 40 and Country Music midnight to 6, 7 to midnight, and Sunday morning Gospel music slots on Richmond, Virginia’s then-CBS affiliate Adult Contemporary AM 1380 and Country FM 98 WTVR; and morning drive at Virginia’s now-defunct “All News All The Time” WNWZ, where Gray served as the official voice. Gray was tapped by the late, great Uncle Bill to host LA’s Simply Gospel Radio and Cable TV Show, on which Gray would joyfully serve 15 plus years. Simply Gospel was broadcast on a number of radio, cable TV, and internet outlets, most notably LA’s KTYM and The International Christian Network/TheICN.com, which put Gray to work as the network’s official voice of joy.
Some Angelinos remember Gray as the announcer who, in the middle of his own joyfully self-produced LIVE info-tainment radio show, which followed The George Putnam Show on LA’s “Talk of The Town” KIEV, Gray was yanked off the air in real time when he answered a caller’s question—asked at the very moment that OJ and Al were being followed by police on the freeway—by saying, “I think OJ is guilty as sin….”
Funded by dollars earned joyfully working as a once-a-week DJ/VJ independent contractor for film director Steven Spielberg and as a joyful customer service rep for Verizon Wireless, a job that required the industrious, joyful Gray to take 2 buses and 4 trains, everyday for over 8 years, Gray founded “Jazz Joy and Roy Global Radio” in 2007 with the joyful mission of inspiring the world’s angry, before they make stupid mistakes like that of the LA DJ at a competing radio station back in the day who reportedly pulled a gun on the boss; joyfully playing the music of a wide, wide—wide—variety of both independent and major label recording artists; and joyfully offering a variety of DJ-related services; but feels his biggest accomplishment and joy was reading to his son Roy Jr. while Roy Jr was still in the womb and hearing Roy Jr. joyfully exclaim, at the just six months old, “I love you, Dad!”
Personal Life
Born in the bad part of Watts, California, Gray was raised and sweetly spoiled by his mother, stepfather and four older sisters in Compton, California, where these angels put up with Gray’s sick-sounding attempted singing and later his daily drumming for years and years. As a teenager Gray was hired to drum for a much older group of musicians called “Love Peace and Happiness,” whose cool, three-word name would later inspire Gray to name his radio show Jazz Joy and Roy. A tennis enthusiast, Gray has enjoyed spending time on the court with some of the best “weekend warrior” tennis players from all proverbial walks of life in cities like California’s Beverly Hills, Culver City, Hollywood, Inglewood, Compton, Lakewood, Irvine, Long Beach, Costa Mesa and Arizona’s Sun City, Sun City Trilogy, Sun City West, Sun City Grand and more.
Gray married Kathryn Diane Hanson in 2009, after Hanson, using orange peels to help Gray breathe, saved the asthmatic announcer’s life in the Ontario, California control room of the International Christian Network, during a LIVE broadcast. The aforementioned and amazing Roy O’Dell Gray Jr is from a previous marriage and Gray has two amazing step daughters named Julie and Jennifer, both of whom were also precocious children, from his marriage to Kathryn. Gray regularly volunteers for charitable causes and charges each client less than a grand, as many of the people who have helped Gray over the years, like, but not limited to, Jenifer Lewis of “Blackish” fame, whose well-marketed, but heartfelt words about Roy might easily be valued in the millions of dollars, have requested that Gray “pay it forward.”
