Kerry Dawson 1949-2016

Veteran deejay Kerry Dawson, who served Austin airwaves for nearly 40 years, died on Monday morning of liver-related health problems. He was 66.

“Kerry had the best ‘overnight’ voice and delivery of anyone I ever heard, coming out of the old school stoner tradition in the very best and most positive sense,” said KUTX deejay Jay Trachtenberg, whose late-night reggae show on KGSR once preceded Dawson’s late-shift magic.

Dawson arrived in Austin from Waxahachie in 1967 and studied Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas. His career crystallized two years later as a deejay at KUT and he continued to master the art of free-form radio at K-98 and KRMH (Karma). In the Seventies, Dawson worked with Joe Gracey at progressive country hot spot KOKE-FM.

“He taught us everything about music. We’d listen to him and then go the record store and search for the stuff he played,” offered Lisa Booth, who listened to Dawson on the air since the Sixties and became his girlfriend in 1996. “His main audience was musicians, because they were the ones who were up at 2am.”

The poster artists also tuned in.

“He was the guy in 1969 who spent his days listening to newly released and/or old-n-dusty records and played ‘em for us all night,” wrote Armadillo World Headquarters poster artist Micael Priest on Facebook. “If you spent most nights chained to a drawing board, he became very important. Among other things, he broke “Down to Seeds and Stems Again Blues,” by the then-unknown Commander Cody & the Lost Planet Airmen. His soft-spoken, deep voice was comfortable in the night, and the brilliance behind it was soon apparent.”

A particular fan of Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello, Dawson enjoyed a run on KLBJ in the early Eighties. When he was between jobs, he’d work as a cook. Once, when he got a gig at an easy listening station, he was so embarrassed that he used the name Harvey Holiday.

In the early Nineties, Dawson began working at KGSR and soon became their full-time overnight jock.

“His voice was perfect for late nights – not an ‘announcer’ voice, kind of quiet, but confident and obviously passionate about the music,” remembered Emmis Austin Radio Vice President Scott Gillmore, who worked with Dawson at KGSR.

The slot served as his on-air home for the next 15 years. Dawson retired in 2007 due to health problems, which began in 2000 when he had a stroke. “His body just gave out,” Booth appraised of his slow decline in health, which ended peacefully on Monday.

“He was literally the last of a dying breed, as these days almost all stations now automate overnights, 12midnight to 6am, by computer,” points out longtime colleague and KUTX fixture Jody Denberg. “Kerry did the opposite of that, weaving together songs for the wee, wee hours with interludes paved by his smooth, resonant voice that imparted trenchant, middle-of-the-night musings.

“He was master of the pregnant pause, unafraid of a moment or two of what might be called ‘dead air,’ but was more like a set-up for his next words, his next song. He was a gentle straight shooter and he lived for the craft of sharing beloved music over the airwaves to listeners who ‘got it,’ no matter how many happened to be tuned-in in the middle of the night.

“We knew we always had a friend when Kerry was behind the mic between midnight and dawn.”