There is a specific kind of Sunday afternoon that only El Paso can produce. The light goes gold and wide. The Franklin Mountains hold everything in like cupped hands. Time slows down, not because nothing is happening, but because everything feels exactly right. My uncle Victor used to soundtrack those Sundays with cassette tapes he had recorded off the radio. Recorded off a man named Steve Crosno.
I was too young to catch Crosno in his prime. But Funkle Victor made sure I didn’t miss him. Those recordings were full of oldies, yes, but they were also full of something harder to describe. A warmth. A voice that talked to you like you were the only person in the room. Like you were already friends and like Crosno genuinely wanted to be there, right there with you.
My uncle had recorded those sessions onto cassettes back in the day, but by the time I finally got my driver’s license, he had burnt all of it onto CDs. My cousin and I would load them up and cruise. Two generations of audio sitting in a jewel case. We didn’t need a destination. Crosno was the destination.
That’s when I knew I wanted to come home to El Paso someday and be on the radio. Crosno inspired me years after his time and miles away from his home. My home.
An El Paso DJ That You Could Feel
Steve Crosno started on his 16th birthday in 1956, hosting a Saturday show at KGRT in Las Cruces. By 1959 he was at KELP, El Paso’s premier Top 40 AM station, and he took to the Borderland like he had always lived here. He left once, chasing a bigger paycheck at a national station in San Diego, and came back. “I missed the people of El Paso and the climate,” he said. “The people here are really warm and friendly.”
Crosno became the first El Paso DJ to play Spanish-language music on an English-language station. He broke away from rigid playlists and opened the dial to R&B, blues, and the Latin sounds his listeners were already living with at home. He wasn’t imposing taste, he was listening to the city. Longtime Fox 92.3 host Mike G called the approach “revolutionary.” What emerged from all those listener requests wasn’t so much a format as the city itself. Later it became what locals called the El Paso Sound, known nationally as Chicano Soul…