Audio By Carbonatix
Jazz radio KUVO, a subsidiary of nonprofit Rocky Mountain Public Media at 89.3 FM, has been shaken by controversy after the exits of four longtime hosts – Rodney Franks, Susan Gatschet, Matthew Goldwasser and Janine Santana – over the past six months. Critics have worried that the station’s musical approach is being watered down in a revenue-driven quest for a younger audience, which management denies.
Now a notable new personality has joined the KUVO team: Paul Donovan, a radio veteran who’s spent most of the past three decades in the Denver market, most prominently with country giant KYGO. And while Donovan has presented many types of tunes beyond C&W over his career, KUVO marks his first gig with a jazz specialist.
This background may concern critics of the direction that KUVO has taken since program director Max Ramirez arrived earlier this year. But there’s no denying that Donovan is blessed with a magical voice – warm, silky, assured, charming – and he thinks that his love of jazz, nurtured while growing up near the music’s birthplace, will come through loud and clear. He’s also thrilled to be moving from cutthroat commercial broadcasting to the public-radio world.
“This feels like a natural evolution,” Donovan says. “It’s like I was in high school and now I’ve graduated to the university, or that I was working in simple math and now I’m in calculus. Welcome to jazz!”
A native of Pasadena, California, Donovan moved with his family to southern Louisiana, just west of Lake Charles, when he was in the second grade. He played several instruments with school combos – clarinet, French horn, F trumpet – and heard lots of jazz played on vinyl by his parents, who had a particular love for big bands. But he dates his own particular jazz awakening to seeing Louis Armstrong sing the title song of Hello, Dolly to Barbra Streisand: “I must have been twelve or thirteen at the time, and I thought, ‘Wow!'”
A few years later, Donovan stumbled into broadcasting. “I got a job in radio during my senior year in high school,” he recalls. “My best friend, who I grew up with in Scouts, had a friend who worked at a station that played country music. And after he got a job, I did, too.”
Before long, Donovan was so busy on the air that he had to drop out of band and leave a part-time position at McDonald’s behind – and in the years that followed, he became a professional radio gypsy. “I hopped around a lot early on,” he notes. “I worked at a station in Shreveport, and then I went to a station in Baton Rouge, and after that, I was in Dallas for three years. All of those stations were Top 40/CHR – contemporary-hit radio. Then from Dallas, I moved to Chicago and worked for a big Top 40 station there for about five years before going to a Top 40 station in New Orleans. That station was right inside the Superdome, which was so cool.”
Paul Donovan in 2018, during his second stint with KYGO-FM.
While in the Big Easy, Donovan and his then-wife purchased a house in the French Quarter, where they were immersed in jazz day and night. He fondly recalls visits to Tipitina’s and Preservation Hall, two of the city’s most storied venues. But in 1993, when management at the station “decided to take things in a different direction,” he says, “I was suddenly out of a job.”
Not for long. After a stopgap turn at a New Orleans country station, he was hired to work in Denver at what was then known as Mix 107.5. The precursor to KS-107.5, “Mix played hot AC [adult-contemporary] stuff: Elton John, Michael Bolton, Rod Stewart,” Donovan says. “I was with Mix for about three years, but then there started to be competition from other stations, like the Peak and Alice, and things started to change.” Meanwhile, he’d become enamored with KYGO, which shared a building with Mix, “and when I heard the Judds, I thought, ‘Man, oh, man, I would love to play this music.'” He got the chance shortly thereafter: Program director John St. John, to whom Donovan had expressed his interest, handed him the afternoon-drive slot when a new hire fell through.
For the next sixteen years, Donovan was a staple on KYGO, which was both Denver’s most successful country outlet and among the market’s top stations overall. But in 2012, his second wife, who worked for the State Department, was transferred to the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. They relocated to Africa, and when her next assignment took her to Washington, D.C., he followed her, resuming his radio career as a disc jockey for a country outlet there.
Around three and a half years later, the pair returned to Colorado. After re-establishing himself at KYGO with a part-time position doing overnights, Donovan took over afternoon drive at the station in 2016. But in August, new management chose not to renew his contract – and within weeks, KUVO welcomed him aboard. In the announcement of his hiring in mid-October, Ramirez stated, “Paul is a radio veteran with a lot of experience in the Denver area. His in-depth knowledge and connection with Colorado communities, combined with his diverse background in music, greatly enhances the personality and culture of our KUVO JAZZ team.”
Donovan understands why fans of Franks, Gatschet, Goldwasser and Santana are upset that they’re no longer part of KUVO. “I am very sensitive to that, and can definitely relate to the listeners experiencing loss around the host departures,” he says. “The jazz community has such passion and such a connection to the music, and the host – that’s your companion on the radio. And that’s what I want to be – to make that connection, that local connection, and be a part of the community. And I’m totally embracing the appreciation and acceptance of all cultures in this community.”
He reassures KUVO loyalists afraid the station is turning its back on tradition that “I’m a big fan of the standards, and of big bands; I love Duke Ellington,” as well as artists such as B.B. King, Dr. John, Leon Russell and the jazz groups Weather Report and Yellowjackets. But he’s also excited to introduce listeners to newer performers, too.
“Historically, jazz has always changed,” Donovan points out. “It went from Dixieland to big band to swing to bebop. Back in the day, a lot of musicians didn’t embrace the bebop sound. And look at all the different styles that Miles Davis played from where he started to where he landed.”
He’s looking forward to blending songs from various jazz eras: “In country music, you don’t hear the Johnny Cashes and Alan Jacksons anymore,” he notes. “But I would love to play a little bit of everything: a jambalaya, a gumbo.”
This recipe hasn’t yet been finalized, and neither has Donovan’s schedule, though he’s likely to debut in the afternoons before long; he was introduced on the air earlier this week. In the meantime, he emphasizes that while “I can’t speak for the programming minds here, I personally want to grow with the new sounds I’m hearing. And I hope KUVO listeners will want to grow along with me.”
