Jim Jeffries was the man behind the music

Every night in 1965 Detroit, from midnight to 6 a.m., a bemused voice floated from the radio. The night man on WKNR-AM spent hours spinning stories and platters, entertaining the third shift at the auto plant, the cops on patrol and the insomniacs craving diversion.

Other disc jockeys went by fancy handles or funny nicknames, but that wasn't the night man's style. The fans of the station, known as "Keener-13," knew he was just plain Jim Jeffries.

One night he joked about swiping one of Ringo Starr's jacket buttons and auctioning it on the air to augment his meager salary, then took a call. A listener asked for a tune by the Lovin' Spoonful.

"I'd love to hear Summer in the City," the listener said.

"Oh, let's not get emotional," the night man quipped, then cued up the song.

Being a Detroit disc jockey in the 1960s was one of the toughest jobs in the music business.

"That was the home of Motown," explained Ron Alexenburg, a record company executive who eventually persuaded Mr. Jeffries to work for him. "You had to know the music. You had to know the artists. You had to relate to the lyrics."

Mr. Jeffries was one of the best, Alexenburg said, because "he loved music. He wasn't one of those DJs who apologizes for his job."

While working nights for WKNR and later at WQXI-AM in Atlanta, Mr. Jeffries spun top 40 and hot 100 tunes. Then in the early 1970s he slipped out from behind the mike to take a job promoting artists. One place he worked was Atlanta's GRC Records, owned by Michael Thevis, whom headline writers later dubbed the "Scarface of Porn."

That's where he met — and nearly overwhelmed — his wife of 32 years, Debbie.

"I'm 5-foot-1 and he was 6-foot-3," she said. "He was this big kind of booming presence, very outgoing, with a great sense of humor."

Mr. Jeffries was willing to do anything to promote a record, recalled Mike Bone, a former president of Island and Chrysalis Records who regarded Mr. Jeffries as his mentor when they worked together at GRC. On one memorable occasion he even jumped out of an airplane

"I asked him, 'Are you out of your mind?' and he said, 'Yeah,' " Bone said.

Before Thevis' 1974 conviction on federal criminal charges closed his record label, GRC had a big hit with My Chevy Van by Sammy Johns. To promote it, Mr. Jeffries teamed up with WQXI to give away — what else? — a Chevy van.

But they didn't buy a new one, Bone said. Instead they paid a few bucks for an old telephone company van, then disguised it with a paint job. Still, Bone said, "this thing would barely run to get into the parking lot for the giveaway."

When Alexenburg lured Mr. Jeffries to New York to head up promotions for Epic Records, he helped make hits out of the Isley Brothers' (Who's) That Lady? Lou Rawls' You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine and Wild Cherry's Play That Funky Music.

He also promoted a group Alexenburg had signed to Epic against his staff's advice, a bunch of has-beens once known as the Jackson Five, now calling themselves the Jacksons. The lead singer then produced a solo album called Off the Wall that didn't need a lot of promotion.

When it came to pushing a record Mr. Jeffries believed in, "he wouldn't take no for an answer," Alexenburg said. Because of his imposing size and his vast knowledge of the music business, he could be hard to turn down.

By 1986, though, the northern winters had begun getting to him and his wife and son, Shawn. They moved to Land O'Lakes, and he left music behind to work for local concerns — the Tampa Lighthouse for the Blind, for instance. He later tried his hand at running his own business helping authors and other would-be celebrities line up radio and television interviews.

Last month, Mr. Jeffries returned to Atlanta for the Georgia Radio Hall of Fame dinner. He was stunned at how many people wanted to shake his hand or give him a hug, said Bob Todd, his former boss at WQXI.

"He didn't realize the impact he had on people's lives," Todd said.

Monday, he had a heart attack. The night man finally signed off. He was 66.