Jack Hayes was a familiar voice on Bay Area stations in the 1960s and 1970s, a popular air personality in what some call the “Silver Age” of radio.
Hayes was born in the Chicago suburb of Hinsdale, IL on Valentine’s Day in 1940. His first radio appearances came as a young boy on Oak Park, IL station WOPA.
After a move to Portland, OR he was heard on the radio as a student at Portland’s Benson Polytechnic High School, appearing on the Disc Jockey Jamboree on the school’s historic radio station KBPS. As a teenager, Hayes did summer relief work at KGON, and would later find work delivering newscasts and holding down disc jockey shifts at Portland stations KEX, KWJJ and KGW.
Hayes found his way to Bay Area radio in the early ’60s at KLIV and KYA before shifting his career to Southern California. After stops at KFWB in Los Angeles and KCBQ in San Diego (where he was known as “King Jack”), Hayes landed at KNEW. He quickly became a favorite of the legendary San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen, who frequently printed one-liners provided by Hayes. Caen even allowed Hayes to use his column to drop career-boosting gossip items, like the April 1970 report that “KNEW’s hot Jack Hayes is having a Sherwood-type beef with management [a reference to KSFO legend Don Sherwood’s frequent public fallings-out with his bosses] and will split to L.A. in mid-May.” Apparently it didn’t happen, as Hayes wound up on KNBR, staying through the early ’70s.
Hayes stayed busy off the air with a concert promotion company, Hayes and Mitchell, that brought big-name rock acts to San Diego and the Bay Area in the ’60s and ’70s. He worked as a voice-over talent and consultant until late in life.
Jack Hayes died in 2020 at the age of 80.