Ken Nordine

Legendary voice-over artist, narrator, and disc jockey Ken Nordine was born on April 13, 1920 in Cherokee, Iowa, the son of an architect. Nordine attended Lane Technical College Prep High School and the University of Chicago. Blessed with an exquisitely deep, rich, soothing, and resonant baritone voice, Ken was heard on "The World's Great Novels" and other Chicago radio programs in the 1940s. He married his wife Beryl Vaughan on July 27, 1945; the couple had three sons. Nordine achieved his greatest popularity in the 1950s at the peak of the beatnik jazz and poetry movement with his delightfully hip and creative free-form spoken-word aural vignettes on such albums as "Word Jazz," "Son of Word Jazz," "Love Words" and "My Baby." These albums showcase Ken's sublimely smooth and mellifluous narration over cool jazz music by the Chico Hamilton jazz group. His vignettes ranged from the lightweight and humorous to the more dark and paranoid to just plain odd and dream-like. Nordine did readings on the TV series "Faces in the Window" and Fred Astaire danced to Ken's divinely mellow ditty "My Baby" on a TV special. Nordine also narrated the 1948 documentary short Against the Tide (1948) and was Linda Blair's vocal coach for the landmark horror classic The Exorcist (1973). Not surprisingly, Ken also lent his supremely dulcet tones to numerous film trailers and TV commercials, with his narration for a bunch of funky and imaginative TV commercials for Levi's jeans made throughout the 1970s and 1980s rating highly as some of his most famous and beloved work in this particular field. In 2005 Ken released the DVD "The Eye is Never Filled." He continued to host his own weekly radio show and perform live in concert almost right to the end. Ken lived in both Chicago, Illinois and Spread Eagle, Wisconsin. Nordine died at 98 on February 16, 2019 in Chicago, Illinois.