In Memory of Paul Denault

Growing up in the seventies and eighties, I had some strange tastes in music. I started out listening to the Temptations and Don McLean, but eventually gravitated from listening to WLS-AM in Chicago to WGN-AM.

WGN was not the all-talk station it is today, but it did its fair amount of talk. Wally Phillips, Roy Leonard and Bob Collins were entertaining, with occasional music. All my heroes of that time are either retired or have passed away.

We have lost another of my heroes in the personage of Paul Denault, known on radio as Paul Rogers. Many people reading this will not know the name, but some may remember the voice. For years, Paul was heard nationally saying things like “You’re in good hands…with Allstate,” and “G. Heileman Brewing Company, LaCrosse, Wisconsin.”

Denault had a voice I envied. I spent ten years in radio and was frequently complimented on my voice. Still, my voice was never of the timbre and quality of a Denault. For me, it was the old saw that it wasn’t “the size, but what you do with it.” Denault had both the size and the knowledge to forge a wonderful career as a voice artist.

Late at night, I would go to sleep listening to “Great Music from Chicago” on WGN. It was a program of easy listening music. There would be jazz in the form of Oscar Peterson and Count Basie, with singers Perry Como and Barbara Streisand in the mix.

I remember when he had a friendly, long running feud with announcer Bob Collins, whose musical tastes ran more toward Loudon Wainwright III’s “Dead Skunk”. You could tell Denault didn’t take himself too seriously. He was not a pompous windbag who only appreciated a finer form of entertainment. He was a working man, honing his craft and working well with others.

I have missed listening to Denault for years now. He left WGN when they banned music back in the late eighties or early nineties for an all-talk format. I understand he worked at another Chicago station for awhile after leaving WGN, but they did not reach us this far south.

I never achieved my goal of growing up to be Paul Rogers. I tried during my time at a small market station that played a similar format. The sad truth is that the retirement of Denault marked the end of a certain era that people like Garrison Keillor wink at when doing “Prairie Home Companion”. It was an era where you let the music be important and you simply served as a conduit for presenting “great music” to the listener.

My sympathies to the family of Denault. He brought many treasures to my life and to the lives of many others. He will forever be remembered.