Donnie McKethan, one of the last of a small fraternity of popular radio evangelists for the music of Frank Sinatra and his fellow mid-century creators of the American Songbook, died at his home in Washington. He was 86.
joined Mr. McKethan in keeping alive the torch songs, big band numbers, ballads and anthems of Sinatra, Count Basie, Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald, Joe Williams and other stars from the middle decades of the 20th century.Blessed with an authoritative and mellifluous voice that was as gentle and elegant as many of the songs he featured, Mr. McKethan focused as much on the writers of the standards as on their performers.
Although his show was broadcast for just two hours a week, on Sunday afternoons, Mr. McKethan’s preparation extended far beyond his airtime. “He spent all of Thursday and part of Friday selecting his music,” his wife said. “When he liked a piece of music, he studied it, looking up everyone who played on it.”that he planned his shows by starting with one song and finding others that bore a relationship, musically or lyrically.
He served in the Air Force before attending the University of California at Los Angeles, from which he graduated in 1965. He worked at the juvenile hall in Los Angeles as a counselor and then moved to IBM, where he was a recruiter in the personnel department in Los Angeles and later in New York.In 1984, he and his wife settled in the District. Mr. McKethan became a human resources manager at the Institute for Defense Analyses in Arlington, Va.
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