Blackwell gifted in all formats

I can't remember the name of the movie and I'm not sure anyone else would, either. It was late one night a couple of years ago, and I couldn't sleep. I started channel surfing, when suddenly there he was.

My former colleague, Dave Blackwell, was playing a bit part as a small-town cop. I laughed out loud. When he worked with me at the Deseret News, I once told him that he was too pretty for newspapers.

Now I had proof.

The next time I saw him at a Jazz game, I brought up the movie.

Blackwell made a self-deprecating remark about nobody having seen it. He even recited some of his lines in exaggerated earnestness, making me laugh again. But I pointed out that long before P. Diddy, J-Lo, Oprah and all the other crossover stars of today, "Blacks" was truly multi-media.

Blackwell, 66, died Thursday at his home in Salt Lake. The longtime media personality left behind thousands of stories. Some of them he covered, others he just told particularly well. That was his gift.

Blackwell was a great storyteller, in any form.

His career was both broad and colorful. There was the 1970s-era movie, but also local radio and TV commercials. He was a popular ring announcer when boxing was big in Salt Lake, in the 1970s and early '80s. He worked for TV, radio and newspaper — a claim not many personalities anywhere can make.

"Absolutely a terrific guy," said Tom Nissalke, 1320-KFAN personality and former Jazz coach, who has known Blackwell for more than 30 years. "Great talent."

Blackwell spent most of his early career in television, working in Madison, Wis., Omaha, Neb., and Salt Lake (KTVX). He then moved on to radio, where he had a show on KWMS.

Blackwell was hired in 1979 by the Deseret News as the first Utah Jazz beat writer. Then-publisher Wendell Ashton wanted a major league personality to cover the city's only major league team, and Blackwell filled the bill.

Some writers are terrifically funny in person, but unable to transfer it to print. That wasn't a problem for Blackwell. He once referred to a ponderous Jazz game as "The Parade of the Pachyderms." On another occasion he referenced people jumping up as soon as a plane lands, by saying they stand "hunched over like Quasimodo."

In person he was equally funny. In my moustache-wearing days he once noted I was so skinny I looked "like a swizzle stick with a moustache." Another time he informed me I resembled "an advance man for a famine."