Paco Navarro, a disc jockey who became the sultry voice of disco in New York City in the late 1970s, helping WKTU-FM become the highest-rated radio station in the city, died on Aug. 8 at a hospice facility in Saddle River, N.J. He was 82 .

His wife, Margarita Sosa Navarro, said the cause was complications of liver cancer and other ailments.

Mr. Navarro spent much of his career playing Latin music on Spanish-language radio stations in Los Angeles, New York and his native Puerto Rico both before and after his time at WKTU. He used the name Paquito Navarro (his given name at birth was Manuel) when he was the host of a salsa show on WKTU’s AM sister station, WJIT, before moving to WKTU in 1978.

WKTU had played relatively mellow rock music, reaching a minuscule share of the New York market, before Mr. Navarro arrived. At the time, many stations programmed mainly Top 40 hits (as many still do). The rock ’n’ roll station WABC-AM had long dominated the New York airwaves with star D.J.s like Harry Harrison, Dan Ingram and Bruce Morrow, known to audiences as Cousin Brucie. Many stations played disco records, but few if any had experimented with an all-disco format.