I've been dreading having to post this but the time has come....
Chicago Tribune:
>> One writer described his voice as an instrument that "muses and oozes like molten gold."
.... As successful as Nordine’s announcing and commercial work was, he was creatively restless and drawn to more adventurous vocal avenues. One night in 1956, he was reciting the poetry of T.S. Eliot and Edgar Allan Poe for musicians Johnny Frigo and Dick Marx at a Wilson Avenue club called the Lei Aloha. He ran out of poems and started to improvise. Thus was born what he called “word jazz,” a concept that would go on to spawn a dozen record albums, a syndicated radio show and make him a legend.
In 1990, Nordine accepted an invitation from Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead to perform with them at a New Year's Eve concert. He would also collaborate with David Bowie, Tom Waits and many others in a late-life career that compelled one writer to call him “an underground hipster for the ages.”
None of this went to his head. “He was just the loveliest guy,” Guilfoile said. “And surprisingly for someone of his generation, he was fascinated with new processes and technology.”
Shortly after celebrating his 85th birthday with a party at the Chicago Yacht Club in 2005, he sat in his home and excitedly showed off his brand-new DVD, his first. It was titled, “The Eye is Never Filled,” a phrase that he remembers his mother saying to him repeatedly when he was very young. He told me then, “This is word jazz in morphing pictures” and described it as something that “looks like it was done under the influence of LSD.”
Nordine lost his wife in 2016 and 18 months ago suffered a stroke. “That kind of inhibited his ability to create,” said Ken Jr. “He was no longer able to use a computer, but he kept modestly active. He just slowed down a bit.
“You hear so much about my dad’s special voice, but the thing was he knew how to use it. He also had such a special mind that enabled him to deconstruct the world and put it back together in the most compelling ways.” <<
Ken's voice itself was an icon. The voice of many an advertised product from the 1950s, his creative drive kept him producing poetry and unique word-soundscapes beginning with a series of "Word Jazz" LPs in the late 1950s, through an NPR Playhouse series of half-hour shows in the '80s, to a 60-minute format broadcast on WBEZ (at midnight Central time) as Sunday slips into Monday for over forty years. Midnight tonight will be the first WBEZ broadcast since his passing yesterday. (WBEZ story)
Ken Nordine was a subliimely likeable human who seems to have never made an enemy in his what-would-have-been 99 years in April. He will be missed but not forgotten. He was in a word, unique.
Lucy Hamilton
Chicago Tribune:
>> One writer described his voice as an instrument that "muses and oozes like molten gold."
.... As successful as Nordine’s announcing and commercial work was, he was creatively restless and drawn to more adventurous vocal avenues. One night in 1956, he was reciting the poetry of T.S. Eliot and Edgar Allan Poe for musicians Johnny Frigo and Dick Marx at a Wilson Avenue club called the Lei Aloha. He ran out of poems and started to improvise. Thus was born what he called “word jazz,” a concept that would go on to spawn a dozen record albums, a syndicated radio show and make him a legend.
In 1990, Nordine accepted an invitation from Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead to perform with them at a New Year's Eve concert. He would also collaborate with David Bowie, Tom Waits and many others in a late-life career that compelled one writer to call him “an underground hipster for the ages.”
None of this went to his head. “He was just the loveliest guy,” Guilfoile said. “And surprisingly for someone of his generation, he was fascinated with new processes and technology.”
Shortly after celebrating his 85th birthday with a party at the Chicago Yacht Club in 2005, he sat in his home and excitedly showed off his brand-new DVD, his first. It was titled, “The Eye is Never Filled,” a phrase that he remembers his mother saying to him repeatedly when he was very young. He told me then, “This is word jazz in morphing pictures” and described it as something that “looks like it was done under the influence of LSD.”
Nordine lost his wife in 2016 and 18 months ago suffered a stroke. “That kind of inhibited his ability to create,” said Ken Jr. “He was no longer able to use a computer, but he kept modestly active. He just slowed down a bit.
“You hear so much about my dad’s special voice, but the thing was he knew how to use it. He also had such a special mind that enabled him to deconstruct the world and put it back together in the most compelling ways.” <<
Ken's voice itself was an icon. The voice of many an advertised product from the 1950s, his creative drive kept him producing poetry and unique word-soundscapes beginning with a series of "Word Jazz" LPs in the late 1950s, through an NPR Playhouse series of half-hour shows in the '80s, to a 60-minute format broadcast on WBEZ (at midnight Central time) as Sunday slips into Monday for over forty years. Midnight tonight will be the first WBEZ broadcast since his passing yesterday. (WBEZ story)
Ken Nordine was a subliimely likeable human who seems to have never made an enemy in his what-would-have-been 99 years in April. He will be missed but not forgotten. He was in a word, unique.
Lucy Hamilton
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