--Written by Melissa Milton

Somewhere in west Philadelphia in 1955, a nine-year-old boy buys his first vinyl record. It won't be his last, not by a long shot. So begins a lifelong journey of musical exploration that takes Allan Laskey from rockstar clothing stores to radio stations, from east to west coast and abroad, and ultimately to New Orleans, where you can hear him on WWOZ every Friday night from 10 pm to midnight in The Rhythm Room.

"There was a blues club in Phoenix called The Rhythm Room," says Laskey, or Alski as he's known on the air, "and I read about it, and I thought, that's a good name. So, I stole it!," he laughs. "It fits what I'm trying to do on the air. I don't want to do any music where you can't at least nod your head. And dance."

Music is deep in Alski's DNA, and New Orleans sounds were in the mix from jump. "There was a dj in Camden, New Jersey, named Jerry Blavat, who we all listened to as kids. His theme song was by Tommy Ridgley, he played K-Doe b-sides, he played all this New Orleans music, and we never knew that it was from New Orleans. He is the reason I'm a dj. And then when I got down here and realized that all this music that I loved when I was a teenager was actually from here…"

Playing the music he loves is how Alski earned his Friday night spot. The New Orleans and OZ bugs bit Alski in 1988 when he first attended Jazzfest. By the time he moved to the crescent city in 2006, he already knew he wanted to be on the airwaves at 90.7 FM.

"I moved down here, and my friend and barber said, you've got a great music collection, and he brought Dwayne (Breashears, then the station's Program Director) over to my house one day. And this is when I was trying to get my house restored and was working and had a million things going on. Dwayne came over, we started playing music, and four hours later he said, can you come in on Monday and go on the air? I subbed for a while, and then in 2009 Dwayne called me up for the Friday night slot. Ten o'clock on a Friday night, who wouldn't want that?"

Decades of collecting vinyl, now largely converted to high quality digital files, and years of seeking out new sounds heard on lesser traveled roads, means you'll never hear the same thing twice in The Rhythm Room. Alski brings his considerable, ever-evolving music collection into the OZ studio for each show and lets it fly from there. He's an old school dj. No methodically curated sets or weekly themes to guide him and his listeners, just inspiration in the moment and a mind-boggling collection of incredible songs by musicians you're likely not to have heard of.

"Dave (Ankers, WWOZ's Director of Content) one time said I'm the most un-Shazammable dj. And I'm proud of that!"

In your birthday month of October, and always, Alski, we salute you! Dance party in The Rhythm Room!