Radio, television, concert promotion, talent management, bit parts in Hollywood films, nightclub and showroom management, record production and writing — Tom Moffatt did it all.

In a career spanning more than 60 years, Moffatt became one of the biggest and most popular figures in Hawaii’s entertainment industry. He pioneered Top 40 radio in the 1950s, released some of the biggest recordings by Hawaii artists in the 1980s and produced some of the biggest concerts in island history.

Moffatt died Monday night at home after several months of declining health. He was 85.

Longtime associate Barb Saito, operations manager and vice president of A Tom Moffatt Production, described the 35 years she worked with him as “an amazing ride.”

“I can’t thank him enough for a career that I’ve had all my adult life. I went to work with him when I was 22, and I’m 57 now. All my adult life has been Tom Moffatt Productions. He taught me so many things about the industry — and let me make my mistakes and have my successes. It was wonderful working with him.”

Born Dec. 30, 1930, in Detroit, Moffatt disliked city life and spent most of his teen years working on farms and going to school in small towns outside the Motor City. He came to Hawaii in 1950, enrolled in the University of Hawaii and gravitated toward a career in radio.

Moffatt was playing jazz on KIKI when he started getting requests for an unknown artist named Elvis Presley. With the station’s permission, Moffatt became the first rock ’n’ roll disk jockey in Hawaii and one of the pioneers of modern Top 40 radio.

Moffatt developed the format with Hawaii-born Ron Jacobs at KHVH, KPOA and finally at KPOI. Moffatt, Jacobs and other deejays became the “Poi Boys” and captivated Hawaii audiences with a seemingly endless series of contests, special events, staged “feuds” between Moffatt and Jacobs, and the “Marathon of Hits” — an annual countdown of the most popular songs in Hawaii as voted on by KPOI listeners. KPOI dominated the Hawaii radio market throughout the 1960s.

George Chun, a friend and entertainment industry colleague for more than 60 years, remembered Moffatt as a man who “loved life.”

“Tom loved people. He loved to help people. He was my best friend. When he was in the hospital (this fall), I would tell him to get out of bed, and he would tell me to shut up. People would say, ‘How could they talk to each other like that?’ but that’s how we were. He was my best friend.”

Moffatt got involved in concert promotion in the 1950s as an outgrowth of his work in radio. He presented musical revues of the hit artists of the day with the “Show of Stars” concerts and then helped open the Honolulu International Center (now the Neal S. Blaisdell Center) with the first in a series of “Million Dollar Parties.” In the decades that followed, Moffatt presented almost every big name in the music business at least once. Among his biggest productions were mega-concerts by Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson, the Eagles and Japanese supergroup Tube, in Aloha Stadium. He also brokered reunion concerts by Cecilio &Kapono, Kalapana and Hui Ohana when conventional wisdom held that the members of the those acts would never work together again.

While Moffatt’s involvement in the Hawaii record industry started in the late 1950s, he became a major figure in the 1970s and 1980s as the head of two labels — Paradise and Bluewater — that released Na Hoku Hanohano Award-winning recordings by Keola &Kapono Beamer, Andy Bumatai, Loyal Garner, the Aliis, the Kasuals, Rap Reiplinger, the Krush, Hui Ohana and Ledward Kaapana. Among the biggest were Keola &Kapono Beamer’s first album for Paradise, “Honolulu City Lights”; the Aliis’ self-titled 1981 album and its spinoff single, “You Are the Best of My Life”; and the Fabulous Krush’s biggest hit, “Regrets.”

Moffatt received the Hawai‘i Academy of Recording Arts Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002.

Celebrity impressionist Billy Sage recalled Moffatt for his sense of humor. Sage once was being rushed to record a radio commercial for another concert promoter and “almost unconsciously” read the ad copy doing his impression of Moffatt’s distinctive radio commercial announcer voice.

“Tom called later and said, ‘Did I voice that?’ (But) he took it in stride,” Sage recalled. Moffatt subsequently released Sage’s all-impressions comedy album, “Honk if You Love George,” which was based on the premise that Gov. George Ariyoshi had “musical teeth” and Moffatt was presenting Ariyoshi in concert.

Early in his career — while he was still in his 20s, and for reasons now forgotten — Moffatt’s teenage fans began calling him “Uncle Tom” and dubbed his radio studio “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Moffatt recently said that he knew of only one person who had ever taken offense at the nickname: an African-American entertainer who arrived from the mainland. Some members of Hawaii’s African-American community have said a disc jockey’s use of the name “Uncle Tom” would be more problematic elsewhere.

Moffatt continued to be active as a concert promoter and radio personality until a few months before his death. He returned to radio in the 2000s hosting a Saturday morning program on Kool Gold 107.9, entertaining listeners with stories about events from the 1950s to the present and playing songs from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s — in some cases songs that had been hits only in Hawaii.

The final Tom Moffatt Production was George Benson in concert Sept. 27 in the Blaisdell Concert Hall.

Moffatt is survived by wife Esther “Sweetie” Kealoha Cablay Moffatt, son Troy Lono Moffatt and daughter-in-law Sylvia Moffatt.

Funeral plans are pending.