R.I.P.: Ken Jackson, Baltimore Radio Voice for Nearly 60 years

Ken Jackson (1932-2023)

Ken Jackson, who employed a silky baritone voice on Baltimore radio stations for nearly 60 years while delivering the news or introducing a romantic ballad, died of a brain tumor Monday at his son’s Towson home. He was 91, according to the Baltimore Sun.

Tom Hall, host of WYPR’s “Midday,” said: “Ken was one of the all-time most gracious guys. To listen to him on the air was the same as listening to him in my office.

“He was a real scholar of music and a relatable and accessible storyteller. He put you right in the recording studio with Ella Fitzgerald or Frank Sinatra.”

Born Kenneth Joseph Desmarais in Lowell, Massachusetts, he was the son of Hector Desmarais, a plumbing firm owner, and Margaret Votour, a homemaker. He later adopted a broadcast name at the request of a radio station manager.

He earned a degree at Emerson College in Boston and worked at the campus radio station, an FM operation patterned on NBC’s old “Monitor” radio show. He said his broadcast heroes were Walter Cronkite and Alan Jackson.

His first paying radio job came at a small AM station in Milford, Massachusetts. He described it as being “just like Ted Baxter’s [from TV’s “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”]. Our signal went down the street and around the corner of this little shoe factory mill town, and I did everything, including cleaning the latrine.”

He moved on to be news director at a station in Worcester, Massachusetts, then was on the air in Reading and later Wilkes-Barre, both in Pennsylvania.

In 1962 the then-news director at WCBM-AM in Baltimore, with whom he had auditioned in a previous job search, called with an offer.

He was at WCBM until 1968 and moved to WBAL-AM to handle the midday newscasts — between the morning and evening shifts of Galen Fromme, a fixture on AM radio.

“I burned out on the news,” Mr. Jackson said in relating his 1973 departure from WBAL.

He dropped out of radio for several years, working on educational publications and doing a variety of freelance work.

“In 2002 I offered him our Friday night slot at WYPR. I’d personally been listening to Ken for decades and loved his big-band music. I also promised he’s never be asked to run a computerized radio board,” said Andy Bienstock, then program director at the radio station.