20-Feb-19 – The great baritone voice has been silenced. Ken Nordine died on Saturday, February 16, at the age of 98.

Nordine lived in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood since the 1950s.

Born on April 13, 1920, to Theresia and Nore Nordine in Cherokee, Iowa, the family later moved to Chicago where Nordine attended Lane Tech High School and University of Chicago. Growing up, he lived near Wrigley Field. In 1954 he married Beryl Vaughan, an actress, and they raised three sons.

It was in the 1940s that Nordine started working in radio, doing commercial voiceovers and movie trailers. Nordine then started performing his spoken-word poetry in a nightclub on Wilson Avenue in 1956.

He is one of the few who created the new genre, Word Jazz, and started recording albums in 1957 during the height of The Beat Generation.

(Left) Montage created from photographs by Ken Whitmore and the “Best of Word Jazz” album cover. (Click on images to view larger versions.)

Nordine was also well-known for his radio show, Word Jazz, on WBEZ, 91.5 FM.

In the mid-1960s Nordine was asked to produce a series of radio spots for Fuller Paint Company. He did ten commercials, each playfully extolling one of the colors in the spectrum.

“The Fuller Paint Company invites you to stare with your ears at yellow.”

People called in, asking to hear the commercials again, but they couldn’t because they were, well, commercials. Fuller Paint Company won an International Broadcast Award for the campaign and Nordine was inspired to record the album, Colors.

In the 1970s Nordine was the voice of Levi’s blue jeans, voice coach for Linda Blair in The Exorcist, the voice of Mr. God opposite Chicago native Laurie Anderson’s Mrs. God. He was voice of the Chicago Blackhawks Cold Steel on Ice commercials.

His career included 15 albums, a DVD, multitudes of compilations, and guest appearances.

Uptown resident Sheila Swann saw Nordine in March 1993 at Rosemont Horizon during the second set of the Grateful Dead.

“The band was playing Space, a free form, jazzy, jammy musical interlude and a man walked on stage and started doing Word Jazz,” recalled Swann. “He performed Flibberty Jib and Island. Between those two poems, Nordine’s deep, resonant, smooth voice asked, ‘How are things in your town?’ The crowd just roared with delight.”

Years later, Nordine would become one of Swann’s design clients, working with him on the DVD cover and insert for The Eye Is Never Filled.

“The first time he called me, hearing that voice on the other end of the phone, I almost fell off my chair. He was lovely. I was working with a national treasure. How could I have been so lucky as to work with him? He would call, and in his deep, soothing voice say, ‘This is your wake-up call.’”

For a short time, Nordine performed his word jazz at the Offbeat Room, 1037 West Granville Avenue.

In 2007, an exhibit by Nordine was displayed at the Swedish American Museum which featured sculptures by his mother along with his own book, Colors, which described in poem each color.

Nordine was honored by the Swedish American Museum at their annual gala in 2013.

The Grammy-nominated artist also recorded more than 40 short trailers for the Chicago International Film Festival.